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THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, 
AND THE NEAR EAST 




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ila^ i: k 4:i^yL / 



IN CONSTANTINOPLE 

Where the Mohammedan call to prayer now sounds above the dome 
of the first great Christian church, and the civilization of the East meets 
that of the West. 








CARPENTER’S fVORLD TRAVELS^ 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE. 
AND THE NEAR EAST/ 

Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, ctAuslria, 
Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, 
T^mania, Italy, Greece, Turkey 

'^BY 

FRANK G. CARPENTER / 

LITT.D., F. R.G.S. 



i i 

WITH I 15 ILLUSTRATIONS 
FROM ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS ^ 


GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1924 







L 3^1 
. 0^7 



I 



COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY 

carpenter’s world travels 


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
AT 

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 

First Edition 


RUG 30 1924 

©C1A800G24(L 
^VV<2« 'V 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 


I N THE publication of this volume on my travels in 
Europe, “The Alps, the Danube, and the Near 
East,” I wish to thank the Secretary of State for 
letters which have given me the assistance of our 
official representatives in the ten countries visited. I 
thank also the Secretary of Agriculture and our Secre¬ 
tary of Labour for appointing me an Honorary Commis¬ 
sioner of their Departments in foreign lands. Their 
credentials have been of great value, making accessible 
sources of information seldom'opened to the ordinary 
traveller. 

To the officials of the several republics and the king¬ 
doms included in these journeys I desire to express my 
thanks for exceptional courtesies which greatly aided 
me in my investigations. 

I would also thank Mr. Dudley Harmon, my editor, 
and Miss Ellen McB. Brown and Miss Josephine 
Lehmann, my associate editors, for their assistance and 
cooperation in the revision of notes dictated or penned 
by me on the ground. 

While nearly all of the illustrations in CARPENTER'S 
WORLD TRAVELS are from my own negatives, those 
in this book have been supplemented by photographs 
from the official collections of the Czechoslovakian 
government, from the Publishers' Photo Service and Ewing 
Galloway, of New York, and C. D. Morris, of the Near 
East Relief, Athens, Greece. 

vii 


F. G. C. 




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Km > ohl: 





4 ..' ' . 






f {. 








CONTENTS 


CHAPTER page 

I. Introducing Ourselves . i 

II. At the World's Peace Capital . . 3 

III. Europe's Oldest Republic .... 13 

IV. The Beehives of the Alps .... 23 

V. Erom the Top of the Jungfrau . . 30 

VI. Venice .38 

VII. Over THE Plains OF Lombardy TO Milan 46 

VIII. The Eternal City .56 

IX. The Grandeur That Was Rome . . 65 

X. In Czechoslovakia.78 

XI. Motoring Through Bohemia ... 88 

XII. A Nation of Athletes ..... 95 

XIII. Erom Prague to Vienna .... 103 

XIV. Vienna .109 

XV. Austria, the Republic. 117 

XVI. In the Eootsteps of the Hapsburgs 124 

XVII. The Country of the Magyars . . 130 

XVIII. Budapest, Where East and West Meet i 35 
XIX. Bread Lands of the Danube ... 143 

XX. Belgrade.152 


IX 








CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

XXL The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, 

AND Slovenes .i6i 

XXII. Peasant Maids and Patchwork 

Farms .i68 

XXIII. Athens.174 

XXIV. The Kings of Greece .... 183 

XXV. Motoring Through the Land of 

Homer.191 

XXVI. Digging Up Old Greece . . . 200 

XXVII. Seen in Sofia.209 

XXVIII. Bulgaria and Its King . . . . 217 

XXIX. A National Labour Army . . . 225 

XXX. Greater Rumania.231 

XXXI. In Rumania’s Oil Fields . . . 239 

XXXII. At the Queen’s Table .... 246 

XXXIII. Constantinople .258 

XXXIV. The New Woman in Turkey . . 265 

XXXV. Here and There in Stamboul . . 272 

XXXVI. Fanatics of Islam.280 

XXXVI 1 . The Passing of the Sultans . . 290 

See the World with Carpenter .... 298 

Index.301 


X 












LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


In Constantinople. Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Mr. Carpenter and League Secretary. 2 

The Reformation Monument at Geneva ... 3 

A Sail Boat on the Lake. 6 

The Palace of the Nations. 7 

Waterfalls at Lauterbrunnen.14 

A Mountain Home.15 

The Clock Tower of Berne.18 

House of the Swiss Capital.19 

How the Dogs Work.19 

An Incline Railway up the Mountainside ... 22 

Street Sweeper of Geneva.23 

Mountain Climbing on the Snowy Peaks ... 30 

The Jungfrau. 3 ^ 

The Heart of Venice.38 

Pigeons of St. Mark’s. 39 

Under the “Bridge of Sighs”.46 

A Village in Lombardy. 47 

In the Arcade of Milan. 54 

Olive Trees. 55 

Christopher Columbus’s Home Port.62 

“Wash Alley” of Geneva.62 

Before St. Peter’s. ^3 

A View of Rome.* • • 7^ 

Swimming in the Tiber. 7 ^ 


XI 

















ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

The Temple of Saturn.71 

A Street in Naples.78 

Seeing Pompeii.79 

The Rebuilt Homes of Pompeii.79 

The Oldtown Bridge in Prague.82 

The Hradchin Palace.83 

Factories of Czechoslovakia.83 

Castle Krivoklat.86 

Farm Women.86 

At Work in the Fields.87 

Scene in Bohemia.87 

A Roadside Shrine.94 

The Annual Meet of the Sokols.95 

A Church in Ruthenia.98 

Going to the Pump.99 

Bratislava.102 

At the Church Door.102 

A Girl of Slovakia.103 

St. Stephen’s, Vienna.. . . 110 

Karl’s Platz.in 

Austrians of To-morrow.in 

Entrance to Schonbrunn Palace.118 

Hochosterwitz Castle.119 

The Danube, Highway of Commerce. . . . . 119 

Millstaat Lake.126 

In Schonbrunn Park.127 

The Fortune Teller.130 

Going to Market.131 

Labourers on a Hungarian Estate.131 

The Castle at Budapest.134 

A Park by the River.134 

xii 





























ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING PAGE 


Fashionables on the Corso .... 

. . • 135 

In a Village. 

142 

A Hungarian Plowman. 

... 143 

Unloading Wheat. 

. . . 146 

Grain Lands of the Danube .... 

... 147 

Scars of Bombardment in Belgrade . 

... 150 

A Gypsy Street Cleaner. 

... 151 

In the Capital of Yugoslavia .... 

... 158 

View of Belgrade. 

... 159 

Cattaro. 

. . . 159 

Gate of the Royal Palace. 

166 

The Ice Cream Vendor. 

167 

A Serbian Peasant. 

... 174 

The Acropolis. 

... 175 

Amid the Columns of the Parthenon 

. 182 

Sentries at the Palace Gate .... 

... 183 

Twenty-five Hundred Years of Athens . 

190 

A Greek Monk. 

191 

A Burden Bearer of Greece .... 

198 

A Sidewalk Cafe. ....... 

198 

In the Stadium. 

... 199 

The Temple of Zeus. 

... 199 

The Caryatids. 

. 206 

Acro-Corinth. 

. 207 

The Corinthian Canal. 

. 207 

Market Day in Sofia. 

. 210 

The Cathedral at Sofia. 

. 211 

The Lemonade Seller. 

. 214 

In the Market at Sofia. 

... 215 

Palace of the King. 

. 222 

'‘Valley of the Roses''. 

xiii 

. 222 















ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

Street in Philippopolis .. 

. 223 

Bulgaria’s Labour Army . 

. 226 

A Peasant Woman . 

. 227 

University at Bucharest. 

. 230 

Rumanian News Girls . 

. 230 

The Young Knitter . 

. . 231 

A Farm Boy of Rumania. 

. 238 

Women Workers in the Oil Fields 

. . 239 

A Gypsy Hut. 

. 242 

Oil Well Derricks. 

. . 243 

A Scene in Sinaia. 

. 246 

Queen Marie. 

. . 247 

A Belle of the Summer Capital .... 

. . 254 

The Casino . 


An Outdoor Restaurant . 

. . 255 

A Terraced Street of Constantinople . . . 

. 258 

The Hill of Joshua .. 

. . 259 

Constantinople . 

. . 259 

The Ahmedieh Mosque . 

. 262 

Porters on the Galata Bridge . 

. 263 

The Modernized Dress of Turkish Women . 

. 270 

Robert College . 

. 271 

Girls' Sports . 

. 271 

Merchants of the Bazaars . 

. . 274 

The Letter Writer . . 

. . 275 

Among the Shops. 

. 282 

At the Fountain. 

. 283 

In Santa Sophia. 

. 290 

Under the Old Plane Tree. 

. 291 


XIV 











THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, 
AND THE NEAR EAST 



THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, 

AND THE NEAR EAST 

CHAPTER 1 

INTRODUCING OURSELVES 

T his is to make us acquainted. Although you 
are seated in your favourite armchair in your 
library while I am in Europe some thousands 
of miles away, yet we are travelling com¬ 
panions. 

As I sit here in my hotel on the shore of Lake Geneva, 
the snowy Alps look down upon me, and Mont Blanc is in 
plain view over the water. The Palace of the League of 
Nations is but a stone's throw away, and France is within 
easy reach. 1 have come here direct from New York to 
be the personal conductor of our tour together. 

We are going from Geneva to the Golden Horn; 
from the oldest Christian republic of Europe to the new 
democracy of Mohammedan Turkey, drifting leisurely 
about this way and that through the many countries 
between. We have no detailed itinerary, but, like 
Napoleon, shall cross the Alps into Italy, and, like Soc¬ 
rates, chat as we stroll about the slopes of Mt. Parnassus 
in Greece. We shall linger under the shadows of the 
Tatra and Bohemian mountains in Czechoslovakia, talk 
with the King of Bulgaria on the heights of Sofia, and take 

I 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

a lunch with Queen Marie at her summer palace in the 
Carpathians. 

Much of our time will be spent on or near the Danube 
and in the rich bread lands of Hungary and Serbia lining 
its banks. We shall take a run from Yugoslavia down 
into Greece, and see the modern nation building up a new 
civilization. Travelling in the footsteps of the Romans 
in ancient Dacia, we shall make a trip through the oil 
fields of Rumania, cross the delta of the Danube to the 
Black Sea, and sailing the Bosporus between Asia and 
Europe, end our trip in Turkey at the Golden Horn. 

Our travels will thus embrace ten different countries, 
all more or less hoary with antiquity, but all alive and 
young with the regeneration that followed the World 
War. We shall hear the cry of the new Italy in what was 
the very heart of Imperial Rome, see the republics of 
Austria and Czechoslovakia rising out of the ruins of the 
Hapsburgs, and find in Hungary a constitutional mon¬ 
archy controlled by the Magyars. We shall meet the 
newest of modern political movements in Bulgaria and 
Rumania; and in Turkey, the land of the Saracens, shall 
behold the followers of the Prophet studying the maxims 
of our Christian colonial forefathers as they try to build 
up a republic in the home of the sultans. 

Our travels include a large territory, and the countries 
and the peoples are so varied in character that at every 
step of the trip we shall have some new thing to see. 


2 



“At Geneva I talked with the Secretary General of the League of 
Nations. He directs the work of scores of experts assembled here and 
conducts the world’s biggest bureau for the exchange of international in¬ 
formation.” 









The Palace of the League of Nations stands for the ideal of interna¬ 
tional peace and political liberty, while the Reformation Monument sym¬ 
bolizes the ideal of religious freedom for which Geneva fought under the 
leadership of Knox, Beza, Farrell, and Calvin. 







CHAPTER II 

AT THE world’s PEACE CAPITAL 

ROM the Slough of Despond to the Delectable 



Mountains, from ''isms’' and "ologies” to plain 


common sense, from nations still prostrated by 


^ the mightiest conflict in all history to the people 
of perpetual peace, that is how one feels when one enters 
Switzerland from any of the war-exhausted countries of 
Europe. 

I have called the Swiss the people of peace, but theirs 
has been peace after strife. Still, their fights have been 
only to gain or preserve their freedom and not to acquire 
more territory by robbing their neighbours. For cen¬ 
turies this little mountainous country, surrounded, as it 
were, by the bullies of Europe, has guarded its boundaries 
and kept its independence. The city of Geneva is emblem¬ 
atic of peace, and its sturdy stand for liberty has made 
it the fitting seat of the League of Nations. 

Strolling about the city to-day, I stumbled upon two 
monuments that seem to me to symbolize the role Geneva 
now plays. One is a great wall of sculpture made of white 
sandstone three hundred feet long and perhaps fifty feet 
high, built against the old wall of Geneva, with the waters 
of the medieval moat still washing its base. It is the 
Reformation Monument and commemorates the battle 
this city waged for religious freedom, now more than three 
hundred years ago. In the centre, cut out of the sand- 


3 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

stone, are statues of John Calvin and John Knox, together 
with those of Farel and Beza, who also lived and worked 
here. The figures are more than three times life size 
and are beyond description majestic. Besides the cen¬ 
tral group, there are six smaller statues, representing the 
most independent thinkers of the great nations of that 
time. One is of Admiral Coligny, the hero of the Hugue¬ 
nots; another, of Oliver Cromwell, who freed England 
from the Stuarts; a third, of the great Dutchman, William 
of Orange; and a fourth, under the wide hat of Puritan 
days, is of our own Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode 
Island. 

The other monument stands for the peaceful settlement 
of international disputes. It is the Alabama Room 
inside the Cantonal Capitol and City Hall of Geneva. 
Here a great financial controversy between countries was 
first settled by arbitration. This was the celebrated case 
of the Alabama claims and in this chamber it was decreed 
that England should pay over to the United States fifteen 
and a half million dollars in compensation for the outrages 
committed by British privateers during our Civil War. 

In this same room was held the initial meeting of the 
International Red Cross. A citizen of Geneva, Henri 
Dunant, was responsible for the founding of the organiza¬ 
tion. As an eyewitness of the desperate battle of Solferino 
he observed the vast amount of suffering resulting from 
the inability of the army surgical corps to care for the 
thousands of wounded that lay about the field. He 
suggested the formation of societies in every country for 
training nurses and collecting supplies to be used in time 
of war. The outcome was the International Red Cross 
Society, which first met in Geneva in 1864. The Swiss 
4 


AT THE WORLD’S PEACE CAPITAL 


red-and-white flag, with colours reversed, was adopted as 
the badge that has since come to mean so much throughout 
the world to sufferers from war, famine, pestilence, and 
other disasters. 

Among the relics in this room is a brass model of the 
Liberty Bell at Philadelphia. It is as big as a quart cup, 
and was sent to Geneva from the Paris Exposition. Al¬ 
most fifty years later it rang to order the opening Assembly 
of the League of Nations. Here also are a plough and a 
pruning hook made of the swords of Union and Confeder¬ 
ate officers of our Civil War. 

Some of its citizens and the friends of the League of 
Nations call Geneva the Peace Capital of the world. The 
city is well situated as a home for the idea of international 
peace. Lying as it does in the heart of Europe and near 
the great ports, it is easily accessible to all parts of the 
earth. On a winding lake of cerulean blue, under the 
icy eyes of Mont Blanc, and in a climate unsurpassed for 
comfort and health, there is no other capital with such 
delightful surroundings. At its widest the Lake of 
Geneva is only eight miles across, but it is longer than from 
Baltimore to Washington, and in many places so deep that 
two Washington Monuments, one on top of the other, 
could rest upon its bottom and the tip of the second would 
just reach the surface. The lake is in the form of a goose¬ 
neck squash with Geneva at the tip of the bill. Its 
waters are light sapphire and so clear that in sailing over 
it one can see the fish swimming above the silver stones 
far below. It is covered with craft large and small, from 
motor launches and steam boats to the skiffs and canoes 
plying from town to town and village to village along its 
shores. 


5 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

Geneva is at the southern end, or mouth, of the lake, 
where the Rhone pours out on its way to the Mediter¬ 
ranean Sea. The river divides the city into several 
islands on which are bath houses, restaurants, cafes, a 
water works, and a power plant. One of the bridges over 
the Rhone is on the site of a bridge destroyed by Julius 
Caesar seventy-eight years before Christ, when he had 
here his first battle with the Helvetians, the forebears of 
the Swiss of to-day. 

The whole lake is lined with summer homes set in the 
midst of beautiful lawns and luxuriant shrubbery. There 
is a wide quay running back of the water front where 
the people promenade of an evening. This has long 
rows of trees much like sycamores, whose silvery 
trunks reach a height of fifteen feet and then sprout out 
into gigantic umbrellas of green. 

Behind this quay with its trees is the Palace of the 
League of Nations, the chief administrative building of 
this world peace capital. It stands on land that once 
belonged to the brave Helvetians and is perhaps but a 
stone’s throw from where they fought so stubbornly with 
Caesar’s Roman legions. It looks out on the lake, across 
which Mont Blanc is in plain view in the distance. 

I have called the building a palace. This is the name 
given it by the League and the people of Geneva, though 
it is, in fact, merely a summer hotel turned into an office 
building. It is a four-story structure which you could 
drop into one of the big hostelries of Atlantic City and 
hardly know it was there, and as for its beauty, many 
hotels of that seaside resort surpass it. There are perhaps 
two hundred rooms. It is built of stone covered with 
stucco and painted light brown. There are fine grounds 
6 



Motor launches have not yet driven from Lake Geneva the boats with 
lateen sails of red like the one of which Byron said: 

This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing 
To waft me from distraction. 








The Palace of the Nations at Geneva, which is only a summer hotel 
converted into an office building, is in keeping with the moderate expendi¬ 
tures and the sincerity of purpose of the League. 






AT THE WORLD^S PEACE CAPITAL 


and trees between it and the promenade, and at one end 
is a sun parlour in which 1 am told the Council of the 
League often meets. 

Entering the Palace, I was glad to find at the door 
neither court flunkies in livery nor soldiers with swords 
and guns. Admission is free to all men and women of 
every nation, and a messenger behind a desk at the en¬ 
trance, who speaks English, German, French, and Italian, 
tells visitors where to go and what to see. When 1 
asked for one of the officials of the Information Section, 
he directed me to take the lift to the fourth floor, walk to 
Room 5, and show myself in. 

I took the push button elevator and rose slowly upward. 
As I stepped out 1 saw a sign over the button notifying 
me that all persons are expected to walk downstairs, 
although they may ride all the way up. This may not 
seem like business efficiency, yet it can be commended 
on the ground of economy. I explored the building in com¬ 
pany with a former American newspaperman, now asso¬ 
ciated with the League I went from room to room, 
meeting some of the higher officials, sitting in on some 
of the conferences, and trying to get as best I could a con¬ 
ception of just what the League is and what it is trying 
to do toward bringing about better relations between 
the many powers and peoples of the earth. 

As a result of my investigations, I am convinced that 
the idea of the League as it now exists is different from 
that in which it was conceived or even that in which it 
had birth amid the terrific labour pains of the Treaty of 
Versailles. The babe was lusty and many thought of the 
League as destined to be the strong man with a big stick. 
To-day it is as quiet and as peaceful as the dove Noah 
7 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

sent forth from the Ark, and it now expects to do by con¬ 
ference what it once thought to do by force. It is founded 
largely on the faith described in Hebrews as, 'The sub¬ 
stance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not 
seen.'' But I would say further that this faith promises 
to be of the kind that moves mountains and that the 
League is on its way to great accomplishment. 

In brief, the League of Nations is an association of 
states pledged to a new way of conducting foreign affairs. 
These states have signed a contract, or covenant, the 
Constitution of the League, to do certain things. They 
have agreed not to go to war with each other or with any 
non-member nation until they have brought their dis¬ 
putes to arbitration before the League and have waited 
from three to nine months after the questions have been 
submitted. The peoples in disagreement are supposed 
to follow the advice and abide by the decisions of the 
League, and if they begin hostilities without submitting 
their controversies, the other states are bound to sever 
all economic and political relations with the offending 
countries. As I understand it, there have been many 
mental reservations and some modifications of this first 
provision of the League, and for the time, at least, its 
teeth have been drawn. 

The second provision binds the nations to work together 
for certain objects of the common welfare. These include 
such non-political matters as promotion of the public 
health, the control of the traffic in opium and other danger¬ 
ous drugs, and the suppression of the traffic in women and 
children. They relate also to certain financial and 
economic adjustments and to matters of international 
communications. 


8 


AT THE WORLD’S PEACE CAPITAL 

To carry out these objects the League of Nations has 
been organized into an Assembly and Council. The 
Assembly is composed of delegates of all the member 
states. Each delegation has only one vote and the 
majority rules. The Council might be called the execu¬ 
tive committee of the League. It is composed of one 
government delegate from each of the four great powers, 
France, Great Britain, Italy, and Japan, and one delegate 
from each of six smaller powers; the latter are elected 
by the majority vote of the Assembly. The Assembly 
meets at Geneva once a year in September; the ten dele¬ 
gates of the Council meet every two months. 

Under these two chief parts of the League are sub¬ 
ordinate branches. The Secretariat-General is devoted 
to carrying out the decrees of the Council and the Assem¬ 
bly. It gathers data for them, outlines future work as 
directed, and suggests methods of procedure. It is the 
great source of information about every subject with 
which the League has to deal, and it may be called upon 
by any of the members at will. This body is headed 
by a Secretary-General, who has under him about three 
hundred and fifty experts, clerks, and officials of one 
kind or another. Furthermore, when occasion demands, 
he can call in experts from any part of the world. 

In addition to this body there is the International Court 
of Justice, which sits at The Hague, and is composed 
of eleven judges and four deputy judges elected by the 
Assembly and the Council. Another adjunct of the 
League, created by the Treaty of Versailles, is the Interna¬ 
tional Labour Office. It has its headquarters here separate 
and apart from the Secretariat-General, which alone 
occupies the so-called World Palace of Peace. 

9 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

This is a bare outline of the constitution of the League. 
What it has accomplished and what it is doing would 
fill many pages. During my stay I have had talks with 
experts and officials from a dozen of the leading countries 
of the world, including Japan. I am impressed with the 
earnestness and confidence of them all, and with their 
plain common-sense view of world troubles. 

The active workers in the Secretariat include representa¬ 
tives of more than thirty nations, and perhaps an equal 
or greater number in the labour organization. All these 
men are authorities on matters relating to their own 
lands and there is scarcely any subject of international 
interest that cannot be pretty thoroughly threshed out 
among them. The meetings of the Council and the 
Assembly are largely conferences where the delegates 
come together to discuss not only their differences but 
all matters of common interest to the nations of the 
world. I understand that the greatest courtesy prevails 
at these meetings and that they are really bringing the 
governments and the peoples of the earth closer together. 

The work of the League is being done at a very small 
cost. I see no signs of extravagance anywhere and on 
every hand are evidences of great industry and practical 
administration. So far, the annual expenses have been 
only about five million dollars, a small sum for running 
the whole universe when you recall that operating the 
United States government alone costs more than three 
billions a year. This five-million-dollar expense is pro¬ 
rated among the several nations belonging to the League 
according to their hypothetical capacity to pay. With 
some, I may say in passing, the payment is theoretical 
only. 


10 


AT THE WORLD’S PEACE CAPITAL 

And now a few words about what the League has done. 
I have before me an official report consisting of seventy- 
two pages of legal cap typewritten manuscript. The 
whole weighs one pound and nine ounces, and it contains, 
I estimate, at least twenty-five thousand words. My 
report must be confined to a few lines. 

In the first place, the League has really begun to exert 
an influence in matters of war and peace. It settled with¬ 
out warfare the dispute between Finland and Sweden 
regarding the Aland Islands, which it awarded to the 
Finns with the consent of the Swedes. It adjusted the 
Albanian-Serbian boundary controversy even after the 
Yugoslavs had actually come in by night and destroyed 
three hundred Albanian villages. It fixed the frontiers 
of Lithuania and Poland, and, although the Lithuanians 
do not feel entirely satisfied, they are abiding by the 
League’s decision. In addition to arbitrating these larger 
questions, the League has settled minor international 
contentions which might have caused wars. Among 
the latter was the friction between Hungary and Rumania 
which at one time bade fair to burst out into fighting. 

As an example of the creative work of the League, we 
have the restoration and re-creation of Austria. This is 
one of the wonders of international finance. Every¬ 
one knows how Austria, practically dismembered by the 
peace treaty, had reached the uttermost economic despair. 
It had been advanced in one way or another the sum of 
one hundred and twenty-five million dollars and still its 
condition grew worse and worse. It was about to give 
up and go into bankruptcy when the League came in and 
was given a free hand to find a solution. It brought order 
out of chaos and by an expenditure of only thirty thousand 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

dollars lifted up the nation, set it on its feet, and started 
it on the road to recovery. In addition to these things 
the League is doing much in international welfare work. 
More than all, it is enabling the nations to see that while 
each differs from the others in important characteristics 
and special interests, none has hoofs or horns. 

Another institution at Geneva that is helping the nations 
to get better acquainted is the summer school at the 
university founded by John Calvin. Here the young men 
and women of America, France, Great Britain, and of 
every country can meet and receive special instruction 
from international experts along any lines they may 
choose. Some of the great scholars of our time live on 
the shores of Lake Geneva and this and other schools 
attract students from all parts of the world. Thus, 
through the mingling of the pick of their youth, the coun¬ 
tries are being drawn into closer and closer harmony, 
and more and more people are coming around to the idea 
that maybe Lord Robert Cecil was right when, during 
his trip to our country, he said: 

“The belief held by many that all the naughty people 
live on one side of the Atlantic and all the goody-goodies 
live on the other is perhaps, to say the least, open to 
discussion.'' 


12 


CHAPTER III 
Europe’s oldest republic 

I N THE capital of Switzerland, halfway between the 
borders of Germany and Italy, and only two hours 
by rail from where the League of Nations is sitting 
at Geneva, I write of how the Swiss govern them¬ 
selves. During my stay in Berne I have visited Parlia¬ 
ment and talked with the members. I have seen some¬ 
thing of the Bundesrat, the Council, or Cabinet, that 
administers the country, and have sat across a plain table 
from the President of the Republic and discussed with 
him the differences between his government and ours. 

We pride ourselves on being the great republic of the 
world. The Swiss had established the independence of 
some of their cantons more than five hundred years before 
our republic was started. It was two hundred years be¬ 
fore Columbus was born that William Tell shot the apple 
off the head of his boy. Some of the authorities say that 
that story is not true but, then, many of them doubt even 
the Bible. At any rate, in 1291 the men of three forest dis¬ 
tricts formed an ''everlasting league” for defence, which 
was the foundation of the Swiss Confederation, and along 
in the thirteen hundreds a thousand or so Swiss Leaguers 
defeated an Austrian army of ten times their number and 
established a republican government. It was after that 
battle that the name Switzerland was applied to this 
mountain land. 


13 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

But just what is Switzerland? And who are the Swiss? 
Fancy yourself in an airplane that has just risen to the 
summit of Mont Blanc. Start there on the border of 
France and fly eastward to the new boundary of Austria. 
You have not travelled as far as from New York to Boston, 
yet you have crossed the country. Now fly to the north¬ 
west to Basel on the borders of Germany and then directly 
south to the borders of Italy. If you speed the machine 
you can make that trip in an hour and twelve minutes. 

Looking down from the airplane, one is reminded of 
what a sailor of the days of Columbus said to the King 
of Spain in describing the island of Santo Domingo. He 
took up a sheet of note paper, squeezed it in his fist and 
threw it, misshapen and wrinkled, upon the table, saying: 
'‘Your Majesty, Santo Domingo is like that.” This 
would be a good description of Switzerland as seen from 
the air. The land is all hills and hollows with snow-capped 
peaks, gorges, and canyons, and here and there a plateau 
or a wide valley. 

Nevertheless, the Swiss have made the Alps bloom like 
a garden. A considerable portion of the country is still 
covered with forests as carefully looked after as the trees 
on your lawn. Another large part is pasture from which 
the stones have been picked so that the sweet grass grows 
among the big rocks, while in the foothills and valleys 
are thousands of small farms and vineyards. About 
one third of the land is in cultivation. 

The Alps are here in two ranges with a stretch of table¬ 
land running between the Juras and the higher Alps 
from Geneva to Lake Constance. This strip, which 
comprises about one fifth of the country, has a bed of 
rich soil and is intensively cultivated. It is the backbone 

14 



The most beautiful of the springs and falls that give Lauterbrunnen 
its name, meaning ‘‘nothing but springs” is the Staubbach, which has a 
drop of 980 feet. The rocks on the roofs are to keep them from being 
blown away in the mountain gales. 











Switzerland is so mountainous that grazing is the most profitable use 
of the land, and milk, cheese, and butter are the principal farm products. 




EUROPE’S OLDEST REPUBLIC 

of Swiss agriculture, and includes the chief industrial and 
financial region. Here are most of the cities and hundreds 
of villages. Switzerland is a country of villages and has 
but few large centres. The four leading municipalities 
are Zurich and Basel at the north, Berne in the centre, 
and Geneva at the west. But these four towns together 
have not half as many people as has Detroit and only two 
thirds the population of Boston. The whole country is 
not quite twice the size of Massachusetts, and its total 
population numbers about the same as Chicago’s. 

And now what of the inhabitants of this wonderful 
country? Like the Americans they are a mixed people, 
and that makes for strength. Switzerland’s neighbours are 
Germans on the north and east, Italians on the south, and 
French on the west. The Swiss are a blending of these 
three stocks. In Geneva, on the edge of France, the 
common language is French. On the north and east it is 
German, and over the divide the popular tongue is that of 
Italy. Almost everyone can speak French and German 
and many know Italian as well. One sees French and 
German signs over the stores, and there are newspapers 
in all three languages. 

The Swiss are well educated. Everybody here can read 
and does read. There are schools everywhere and the 
nation is known for its educational facilities. People come 
from all over the world to attend Swiss universities and 
to have their children taught German and French in the 
schools. 

To-day there is absolute equality among the people, 
who are the most democratic and independent in Europe. 
They have carried republicanism farther than we have, 
and have ironed out many of the troubles with which 

15 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

we are still struggling. As far as I can learn there is 
neither graft nor pork barrel in the conduct of the govern¬ 
ment and the Swiss Parliament is much more respected 
than our Congress. The whole nation takes an interest 
in public affairs, and everyone goes to the polls. The 
Parliament is made up of men from all classes, though 
most of the members are of moderate means and simple 
life. 

Berne is one of the oldest, quaintest, and most charming 
little cities of Europe. Founded when Richard the Lion- 
Hearted of England was fighting the Turks for the posses¬ 
sion of Jerusalem, it was a free city before the Magna 
Charta was signed. It was chosen as the seat of the Swiss 
Confederation at about the time of our Mexican War, 
and since then has been the home of all government 
activities, except those of the Supreme Court which, as a 
sop to French Switzerland, sits at Lausanne. 

Berne is only about one fifth the size of Washington, 
but it is far more picturesque. The town is divided by 
the deep, swift rushing Aare, whose glacial waters roar 
as they tear their way on down toward the Rhine. 
Magnificent bridges span the stream. The Capitol and 
the President’s Palace are on a height right over the river. 
They look toward the Alps, facing a half-dozen mountains 
more than two miles in height. After my talk with the 
President we walked out on the balcony in front of his 
office and His Excellency pointed out the gigantic crest 
of the Jungfrau, and other snow-capped peaks that are 
known all over the world. 

Before entering the government buildings, I strolled 
about through the business parts of the city. I felt as if 
I had slipped back into the Middle Ages. The narrow 

i6 


EUROPE’S OLDEST REPUBLIC 


streets are walled with three- and four-story buildings with 
overhanging tiled roofs, out of which peep little dormer 
windows, looking down like so many red-rimmed eyes on 
the traffic below. Some of the houses are so old that they 
lean this way and that and make one think of the drunken 
structures on the Amsterdam piles. Here and there the 
arch of a tower curves over the highway. In the most 
noted of the towers is a great clock dating from the six¬ 
teenth century. When the hours strike a little door in 
the tower flies open and in the doorway a great rooster 
struts and crows, while a troop of bears marches in pro¬ 
cession around a figure supposed to represent Time. 
This clock has hands and figures plated with gold and its 
dial, which is about twenty feet in diameter, is decorated 
with frescoes. 

I walked through the arch of the tower and under the 
clock into a mile or so of arcaded stores. The pavements 
seem to be tunnelled through the walls of the houses and 
are lined with stores. The stores are like monastery 
cells looking out upon cloisters. It is so dark in them that 
most of the shops have to burn electric lights throughout 
the whole day. The arcades are about fifteen feet wide 
and, in the oldest part of the town, so low that one’s 
head is not far from the ceiling. Now and then there 
are cross tunnels for the streets cutting through to the 
right and the left, the whole forming a kind of catacomb, 
quaint and delightful, but not in accord with our ideas 
of business efficiency. 

The chief government buildings are situated between 
these arcaded streets and the Aare, on the high bluff over 
the river. From the opposite bank of the stream they 
look like fortifications. They were planned by Swiss 

17 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

architects and built of sandstone from the quarries of 
Berne and marble from several cantons. The wood is all 
native and the furnishings, even to the great clock in the 
entrance hall, were made in Switzerland. The clock, 
which is the official timepiece of the Republic, is as big 
as a piano box and has a glass case that shows the works. 

The Swiss keep everything polished up to the nines, 
and the Assembly halls are scrubbed like so many Dutch 
kitchens. As I passed through on my way to see the 
President, I noticed a gang of old women on their knees 
washing the tiles. There were foot scrapers and foot 
wipers at the entrance and rugs for cleaning one's shoes 
at every door. During my whole trip I saw no cuspidors 
such as one sees in every corner about the halls of our 
Congress. 

This afternoon I visited the Assembly rooms and 
lingered awhile in the lobbies, which are walled with 
marble and have ceilings gorgeous with paintings and 
carvings. The Chamber of the National Council is built 
in the shape of a half moon with the seats rising in con¬ 
centric rows from the front to the back. The President 
sits on a raised platform somewhat like our speaker's 
dais, with a clerk on each side of him, and the press gallery 
is at the front, so that the members face the newspaper¬ 
men as they speak. 

A curious feature is the public translator. Speeches may 
be made in any one of three languages, German, French, or 
Italian. The orders of the President are translated by 
the official interpreter and all his messages are furnished 
to the press in German and French. The government 
reports are printed in German, French, and Italian so 
that every citizen can read them. 

i8 



Just before the hour the little door in the old clock tower at Berne 
opens to show a procession of carved wooden bears filing around a figure 
of Time, while on the hour a cock struts and crows in the opening. 



















The old houses of Berne seem to fit so perfectly into this land of clock- 
makers that one would not be surprised to see wooden cuckoos burst out 
of the funny little windows and call the hours. 



“Leading a dog’s life” in Berne isn’t so bad when the master helps 
to pull the load. The Swiss draft dog is close kin to the St. Bernard of Al¬ 
pine fame. 














EUROPE’S OLDEST REPUBLIC 


The Swiss Republic is as free and democratic as ours, 
but the machinery of administration is different. The 
country is divided into twenty-two cantons, or states, 
which elect a National Council and a State Council. The 
State Council corresponds to our Senate, being composed 
of forty-four members, two from each canton. The 
National Council is like our House of Representatives. 
It has one hundred and eighty-nine members, chosen by 
direct vote at the rate of one for every twenty thousand 
of population in the Confederation. The two houses 
together are called the Federal Assembly. Clergymen 
are not eligible for election to either house. 

General elections are held every three years on the last 
Sunday in October, and the voting is often done in the 
churches. Only men over twenty-one have the right 
to vote; for Switzerland has not yet adopted suffrage 
for women. Each canton elects and pays two members 
of the State Council in any way it may choose. The 
Geneva councillors get five dollars a day, but the average 
salary of the others is four dollars. Some members get 
only three dollars. The representatives of the lower 
house are paid from the government treasury and get five 
dollars a day for the days they are present. 

The legislative sessions are held four times a year. As 
they usually last only two or three weeks, a whole year’s 
service seldom takes up as much as three months. The 
members attend regularly; their constituents object if they 
stay away. If a representative in the National Council 
cannot give a good reason for his absence he does not get 
his five dollars. The meetings begin at eight in the morn¬ 
ing in summer and at nine in winter. 

The executive authority of the Swiss government is in 
19 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

the hands of the Bundesrat, or Federal Council, whose 
seven members are elected by the Federal Assembly every 
three years. These seven men have the fattest official 
jobs in the Republic if five thousand dollars a year can be 
called fat. They are like our Cabinet members and each 
one is allotted a department. The Federal Council elects 
the President of the Republic, who has a far different 
position from that of the President of the United States. 
His term is for one year and his salary is fifty-four hundred 
dollars. He is really only the Chairman of the Council. 
The Vice-President is also elected by the Bundesrat and it 
is an unwritten law that he shall succeed the President. 
Neither President nor Vice-President may hold his office 
for two successive years. 

The President, with whom 1 talked to-day, is Carl 
Scheurer, a citizen of Berne. He is a well-educated, stout 
little man, with a fair complexion and a scanty thatch of 
blond hair fringing the shiny baldness of his crown. He 
was dressed in a business suit, with a high wing collar and 
a black tie, and wore large glasses with black rims behind 
which his blue eyes twinkled as he talked. The room 
where we chatted was plainly furnished. In a cabinet 
against one wall were models of rifles and cartridges used 
by Switzerland to guard her neutrality during the World 
War and opposite this, looking down upon the President's 
desk, was an old photograph of Abraham Lincoln. In 
the secretary's room adjoining 1 saw two portraits, one 
of Robert E. Lee and the other of William T. Sherman, 
both painted in 1869 by a Swiss artist. 

My conversation with the President covered a wide 
range. We talked of the political parties, of which the 
country has a half dozen or more, including Social Demo- 


20 


EUROPE’S OLDEST REPUBLIC 


crats, Liberal Democrats, Catholics, Agrarians, and others. 
When we touched on the tariff, the President said that our 
high duties do much to hold down the production of Swiss 
factories. We spoke of the initiative and the referendum, 
both of which he approves, though not without some 
grains of salt. 

The government of Switzerland owns the railways, and 
the telegraph and the telephones are under the post-office 
department. As usual in such cases, the properties are 
extravagantly managed, and last year the posts and the 
railways ran almost two million dollars behind. 

Republicanism goes farther here than with us. Every 
village and district is a little republic. The communes 
into which the cantons, or states, are divided, correspond 
somewhat to our counties, townships, and wards. They 
are more than three thousand in number and settle almost 
every local question. The people elect their own school 
teachers and policemen, and have town meetings in which 
they decide upon all communal matters. Sometimes the 
meetings are held in the open air, and the decisions are by 
acclamation. 

Some communes own property such as forest lands 
and houses, and in these every family may be entitled 
to free pasture or free wood for the winter. In the early 
morning and again at twilight, one sometimes hears the 
concert of the cowbells as the cows owned by the various 
families of a village are being driven to or from the com¬ 
munal pastures in the mountains near by. Once back 
in the village every cow straightway seeks her own home 
without any urging. 

A few of the communes have grown rich from their 
forests, rents, lands, and houses. The privilege of citizen- 


21 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

ship in such communes is somewhat like membership in a 
prosperous stock company, and if it is not inherited it 
may be bought for a good round sum. On the other hand, 
it may prove less than a blessing, for each commune must 
pay its local expenses and take care of its own poor. 


22 



Mark 'I'wain’s prophecy that some day every mountain in Switzerland 
would have a railroad up its back like a pair of suspenders seems nearly 
I'uKilled. The incline railway from Murren leads up the Allmendhubel 
to a marvellous view. 











The old Genevese street cleaner stands for two cardinal virtues of the 
Swiss—their cleanliness and their thrift. Switzerland is the land of the 
apron, which is worn by all classes of workers, men and women, to save 
their clothes. 


1 






CHAPTER IV 


THE BEEHIVES OF THE ALPS 

P LUCK a hair from the head of your baby. 
Stand it on end under a microscope and split it 
lengthwise into five hundred strips. Now meas¬ 
ure the thickness of each strip and if your work 
has been absolutely accurate you may have an idea of the 
exactness of the tools used in a Geneva watch factory. 

It was almost under the shadow of the Palace of the 
League of Nations that I went through a factory that has 
been making watches for one hundred and fifty years. I 
found the workmen using micrometers that measure a 
hair as you might measure a log with a pair of calipers. 
In order to prove this fact, I pulled out one of the sandy 
gray hairs still left on my head and handed it to a watch¬ 
maker. He found it was five-hundredths of a millimeter 
thick, and flattered me by saying: 'Ht is as fine as the 
hair of a woman.” 

Some of the screws made for the watches are smaller 
than the head of a pin, and there are cogwheels with teeth 
as tiny as the finest grain of sand on the seashore. Indeed 
I had to use a microscope to see the teeth at all. Every 
watch has one hundred and seventy parts and the chief 
difference between large and small timepieces is in the 
size of their mechanisms. This factory makes some 
watches not as big as your thumbnail. 

No watch keeps perfect time, but some made here vary 

23 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

only a second in twenty-four hours, or just about six 
minutes a year. If you will open the back of your watch 
and look at the flying balance wheel you may have some 
idea of what this means. That balance wheel is making 
about eighteen thousand revolutions an hour, and it travels 
thousands of miles every year. If I remember correctly, 
it goes eighteen miles every day; nevertheless, in a distance 
as far as from New York to Detroit, its variation is only 
five feet. 

Switzerland has been making watches for three or four 
hundred years. For generations all the watches were manu¬ 
factured in the homes of the workers, only one or two parts 
being made at each house. Later factories were estab¬ 
lished and after the cheap machine-made American watch 
began to capture the trade, the Swiss adopted similar 
methods and turned out watches by the thousands where 
they had formerly made them by the dozens. The United 
States has always been one of the chief buyers of Swiss 
watches, but we import mostly finished movements, mak¬ 
ing the cases ourselves. 

Switzerland makes fine clocks as well as fine watches. 
The stores sell clocks so small that you can carry one in 
your vest pocket and there are others so large that they 
are fit only for church steeples. Neither the watches nor 
the clocks are cheap, yet I doubt whether the average 
timepiece of this country is any better than or even as 
good as our own. 

In Zurich, in eastern Switzerland, where I am now, the 
people devote their skill to textiles instead of to metal¬ 
working. This is the weaving and embroidery centre, 
just as western Switzerland is the watch-making region. 
The town of Zurich does a big business in silk. Basel, at 
24 


THE BEEHIVES OF THE ALPS 


the head of navigation of the Rhine, on the border of 
Germany, is the chief place for the manufacture of ribbons. 
Not far from Lucerne a great deal of artificial silk is made 
and St. Gall sends us hundreds of thousands of yards of em¬ 
broideries. There are cantons, such as Appenzell, where 
the people have been producing hand-made lace for cen¬ 
turies. 

I spent some time last week on Lake Brienz on the 
borders of which is a village of wood carvers, who make 
toys and other articles that are sold all over the continent. 
In some families all the men have been wood carvers for 
hundreds of years. On the south side of the Alps, the 
Italian Swiss are breeding silkworms and one district 
raises snails for the gourmets of Paris. The villages often 
specialize in single trades, one town sending out masons 
or glaziers and another graduating pastry cooks. Most of 
the waiters and many of the best chefs and managers in the 
hotels of Europe were trained in Switzerland. 

The tourist and hotel business is an important factor in 
the life of the nation. The thousands of hotels represent 
an investment of about five hundred million dollars. 
They spend on provisions and wages something like twenty 
million dollars a year, and earn big profits in good seasons. 
Formerly the best patrons were the Germans, who came 
three or four times a year and spent freely. Now most of 
the money comes from Americans. 

I am surprised to find how important agriculture is in 
this land of the mountains. One would think nothing could 
be raised in a country all hills and hollows, but the truth 
is that three fourths of the total area of Switzerland is 
productive. There are several hundred thousand farms 
and it is estimated that there are a quarter of a million 

25 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

acres in holdings of less than fifteen acres each. Every 
patch not covered with rock^ or snow is either cultivated 
or used for pasture or forest. About thirty per cent, of the 
land is wooded and almost forty per cent, is given up to 
grass. High up in the mountains you will find cows feed¬ 
ing on patches of green no bigger than parlour rugs and 
separated from each other by piles of stone. The cows 
are turned out into the mountains as soon as the grass 
sprouts in the spring and are driven higher and higher up 
as summer comes on. 

The people watch every grass patch and manure each 
one every year. When the automobiles began coming 
over the mountains they feared that the dust raised would 
hurt the grass and I am told that they often threw buckets 
of filth at passing cars to show their displeasure. 

Nearly every farmer knows how to make cheese, of which 
fifteen million dollars' worth is annually exported. The 
two thousand or more factories engaged in cheesemaking 
use something like one hundred and fifty million gallons 
of milk in a year. The cream is excellent, but as a rule one 
gets only hot milk for his coffee at the hotels. The Swiss 
also make a great deal of condensed milk and milk choco¬ 
late. 

From an industrial standpoint, Switzerland labours at 
great disadvantage through her lack of raw materials and 
coal. She has no minerals of value and she has to import 
all the fuel she uses to make steam or electricity. The 
charges for coal are so high as to be almost prohibitive 
and wood is practically the only fuel. An American woman 
who lives in Zurich tells me she had to pay seventy-five 
dollars a ton last winter for coal. 

To make up for her lack of coal, Switzerland has begun 
26 


THE BEEHIVES OF THE ALPS 


to develop her water powers and in time the “white coaP' 
of the mountains will make her practically independent of 
the “black diamonds'' bought at such exorbitant prices 
from France or Great Britain. The great hope of the coun¬ 
try lies in the waterfalls of the Alps. Their force has been 
measured and it is estimated that the power available is 
equivalent to about four million tons of coal every year, 
enough to run all the Swiss factories and railways and light 
every home in this mountain land. Within a few years 
all the trains in the country will be electrically driven. 
They are already drawn through the St. Gotthard and 
Simplon tunnels by electric locomotives, and the lines from 
Goldau to Zug, from Immensee to Rothkreuz, and from 
Lucerne to Zurich have also been electrified. The total 
railroad mileage now operated by electric power is as 
great as the distance from Detroit to New Orleans, and in 
her total per-capita water power development Switzerland 
is second only to Norway. 

While Switzerland has a per-capita foreign trade much 
larger than ours, the value of the goods she sells to the 
world comes chiefly from the skill with which she manu¬ 
factures them, and she has to buy all her raw materials 
from abroad. In the hands of the Swiss, a pound of cotton 
becomes a pound of lace, worth five hundred times what 
was paid for the material in it, and a few bits of metal are 
transformed by the workmen into a delicate watch of great 
value. 

The Swiss are among the world's experts in making the 
most of what they have, and they are one of the thriftiest 
peoples on earth. This little republic leads all nations 
in the number of its savings accounts. In a population of 
less than four millions there are two million six hundred 
27 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

thousand savings-bank depositors, and the total sum to 
their credit is almost five hundred million dollars. 

The canton of Geneva ranks first in number of deposi¬ 
tors and amount of savings, and the Genevese care so 
much for the pennies that a savings account may be opened 
with as little as four cents. 1 am told that deposits of 
less than one franc are often made by the grown-ups, and 
that the children paste uncancelled postage stamps in 
books and send them to be credited. 

This saving sense among the Genevese is proverbial. 
1 think it was Voltaire that wrote of a woman who fell into 
Lake Geneva and was drowned. She was taken out ap¬ 
parently lifeless. The rescuers moved her arms back and 
forth, but her heart did not beat. A mirror was placed on 
her lips and no sign of vapour appeared. Her pulse did 
not throb and her flesh was stone-cold. They were about 
to put her into a coffin when Voltaire, who stood by, asked 
about her nationality. He was told she was a Genevese. 

''Ah,'' said he, "wait a moment. 1 am sure I can bring 
her to life." 

And thereupon he took a five-franc piece out of his 
pocket and laid it in her open palm. The fingers came 
togetherwith a jerk and the silver was clutched tightly in 
her fist. The woman straightway sat up and put the coin 
into her pocket. 1 cannot vouch for the truth of this 
story, but 1 should hate to risk a dollar that way 
to-day. 

Switzerland is the land of the apron and the patched 
pantaloon. Neither man nor woman is ashamed of work 
or working clothes. Every labourer has on his blue jeans 
and every woman clerk wears a nightgown-like slip of 
white cotton covering her dress from shoulders to shoe 
28 


THE BEEHIVES OF THE ALPS 

tops. The railway porters and the baggage men, the 
street cleaners, the grocers, the butchers, the bakers, and 
the candlestick makers, all wear something to protect 
their clothes. While at their trades the mechanics wear 
aprons and every school boy and school girl has a loose 
black overdress, which buttons tight round the throat 
and catches the ink spots. 

In Switzerland there is no display for the sake of dis¬ 
play and the people are democratic both in manner and 
dress. Geneva, for example, is a city of the rich and 
there are hundreds of families who live on incomes from 
their investments. They have beautiful villas and their 
homes are wonders of comfort and beauty but everyone 
seems to dress simply. 


29 


CHAPTER V 


FROM THE TOP OF THE JUNGFRAU 

I FIRST saw the Alps when, as a boy I walked from 
Italy over the Simplon and climbed on foot to Cha¬ 
monix and the famed Mer de Glace. To-day one 
shoots under the Simplon in a tunnel and reaches 
Mont Blanc by railway. An electric road has pierced 
the heart of St. Gotthard and it was by bottled lightning 
that I came to the Jungfraujoch in the glacier-covered 
saddle between the Jungfrau and its mighty neighbour, 
the Monch. Years ago 1 stopped at the monastery from 
which the Saint Bernard dogs were sent out with brandy 
kegs strapped to their necks to rescue mountain climbers 
lost in the snow. Now at the dangerous spots there are 
telephones so that one may call up Central and find out 
where he is. The Alps are latticed with electric ladders 
and the gods' great gifts of magnificent scenery have been 
brought within easy reach of man. 

As I write these words I am more than two miles above 
the level of the sea, with clouds above and below me and 
giant peaks of ice all around. Right under my feet is 
the Aletsch Glacier, a dazzling mass of ice and snow a 
thousand feet deep and more than twenty miles long. 
Beyond, through a break in the mist, I can look into a 
canyon, where far down in the green lies the toy town 
of Interlaken from which I have come. To right and left 
there are huge masses of snow-dusted rocks. Towering 

30 



At the top of the Jungfrau amateurs get a chance to try their skill at 
mountain climbing amid the snow-clad peaks two and one half miles 
above the sea level. 








The journey to the top of the Jungfrau is over little mountain pastures 
and through mighty canyons, from the lofty walls of which spring water¬ 
falls and rushing streams. The snow-wreathed Virgin of the Alps is in 
sight all the way. 





FROM THE TOP OF THE JUNGFRAU 

above me, the peak of the Jungfrau is lost in the clouds. 
The Jungfraujoch is about hal-f a mile from the summit, 
and the gigantic Monch, whose height is only two hundred 
feet less, is at my back, like a snow-gloved hand reaching 
up to the blue. The clouds, the rocks, and the snow make 
the whole seem a mighty valley of desolation, which just 
now is curtained with masses of vapour rolling to the sky 
and shutting in for the time being this cold, awful, stupen¬ 
dous workshop of the gods. In a few moments the clouds 
will break and I shall have a glimpse of the Alps tumbl¬ 
ing over one another away off to the east and the west. 

I have seen most of the great mountain views of the 
world, but none which, for sheer, beauty, surpasses 
that of the Jungfrau. I have stood on Tiger Hill near 
Darjeeling and watched the sun gild the top of Mt. Ever¬ 
est, the loftiest mountain on earth. Everest is almost three 
miles higher than the Jungfrau, but the effect from Tiger 
Hill is somewhat spoiled by distance and by the lower 
peak of Kunchinjinga, which stands in the foreground 
obstructing the view. From the bronze statue of Christ 
that marks the boundary between Argentina and Chile I 
have seen Aconcagua, the highest of the Andes. It is 
almost two miles higher than where I am now, but like 
Mt. Everest, it is dwarfed by its surroundings. I have 
seen Mt. McKinley from the heights of Alaska and I know 
Fuji-yama, the snowy symmetrical cone that the Japanese 
worship. Each has its own beauties, but none has a more 
beautiful setting than the Jungfrau, the Virgin of the 
Alps. Whether viewed from the valley, or here face to 
face, she has a majesty all her own. 

My trip up the Jungfrau was made on the cog railway. 
When Mark Twain was at Interlaken in 1892 he predicted 
31 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

that the day would come when every mountain in Switzer¬ 
land would have a railroad up its back like a pair of sus¬ 
penders. That prophecy is almost fulfilled. There are 
something like a hundred cog roads in the Alps, and when 
the times are good in Europe, they must pay very large 
dividends. 

The Jungfrau Railway is remarkable in that a greater 
part of it is a tunnel through the rock under glaciers 
and snow. After running for some miles on the face of 
the mountains, it cuts into the heart of the Jungfrau 
and the Monch, and crawls upward through a great worm 
hole excavated in the limestone and gneiss. The trains 
are pulled by three-hundred-horsepower locomotives run 
by electricity generated by waterfalls. The rack-and- 
pinion system used is a new one, which is said to be abso¬ 
lutely safe. 

My ride from Interlaken to Jungfraujoch was delight¬ 
ful. The three cars were walled with windows and had 
comfortable seats. They were filled with tourists, talk¬ 
ing German, French, and English. Most of them were 
provided with guide books and maps and many were busy 
looking for things mentioned by others instead of seeing 
what they could observe through their own eyes. 

Only the summits of the Alps are bleak and bare; the 
valleys and foothills are covered with verdure. Forests 
of stately pines climb the sides of precipitous cliffs which 
may be a thousand feet high. Here all is green and 
there all is bare rock. In riding up the Jungfrau via 
Lauterbrunnen to the Little Scheidegg more than a mile 
above the sea, one goes through a panorama of magnificent 
scenery with the Jungfrau in sight almost all the way. 
A part of the journey is through mighty canyons, the walls 

32 


FROM THE TOP OF THE JUNGFRAU 

of which seem fortifications a thousand feet high and out 
of which spring waterfalls dropping almost sheer to the 
bottom. Now one is climbing over mountain pastures 
spotted with log huts, their great overhanging roofs held 
down with rocks, now passing through forests where the 
trees grow smaller and smaller until at the top they are 
stunted and flattened bushes that seem to be hugging the 
ground. There are many wild flowers, dandelions, butter¬ 
cups, daises and, farther up, violets as blue as the sky. 

The snow line is soon reached and always one is in sight 
of the glaciers, which nestle between the mountain peaks. 
In some places the glaciers move out over the cliffs and 
break, increasing with their icy walls the dizzy height of 
the precipices. These ice rivers wind about through the 
valleys of the giant mountains above, and one wonders 
whether there may not be a snow slide and trembles lest 
a terrible avalanche come down on the train. During 
our trip a part of our way was cut through an avalanche 
that had rolled down this spring. It was a mass of a 
hundred acres of snow and ice, many feet thick, which 
could be seen above and below on both sides of the road. 
On the cleared track the snow reached high over our cars. 
As we came out I saw a broken telegraph pole which had 
been crushed by the slide. 

I had a convincing evidence here of the value of an 
experiment made to test the effect of the altitude upon 
tourists. The original idea was to run the railroad 
clear to the top of the Jungfrau, a height of 13,670 feet. 
It goes up by stages and has now reached Jungfraujoch, 
which is 11,340 feet above the sea. One day it will 
probably be extended right to the summit and then an 
electric searchlight will be placed there, which will be 
33 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

visible from the Cathedral of Strasbourg on the north side 
of the Alps to the Cathedral of Milan on the south. 

When the railroad up the Jungfrau was projected the 
government held up the enterprise on the ground that 
invalids and people of weak constitutions would be injured 
if suddenly lifted into the rarefied air of that altitude, 
and the promoters had to prove that the trip could be 
safely made. They employed Doctor Regnard, an expert, 
to make a test upon two guinea pigs. The learned doctor 
put the pigs under a glass globe and then slowly lowered 
the atmospheric pressure within. One of the guinea pigs 
was put inside a wheel so that it had to run to keep from 
falling. The other was left squatting on the bottom of 
the globe. The experiment showed that a person can live 
when taken quickly to a considerable height above the 
sea if he is quiet and remains there for only a short time. 
It also proved that if he takes exercise, or overworks, he 
is almost sure to get the soroche, as mountain sicknefs is 
called. 

In coming up the Jungfrau I had no trouble until I 
made my way up the steps from the Jungfraujoch out into 
the open. Then when 1 tried to hurry up the snowy path 
leading a distanceof perhaps two thousand feet to the view, 
my heart straightway beat like a triphammer and I fell 
flat on the ground. After a little while I sat down on a 
chunk of ice by the side of the path. My heart was soon 
quiet and I was able to walk a few steps. I took the 
rest of the climb by relays of about three steps and a halt, 
and finally reached the top. Heretofore I have been more 
than three miles above the sea without bad effects as long 
as I took no severe exercise. In going up the Andes I 
once reached a height of 15,865 feet, but I noticed that 
34 


FROM THE TOP OF THE JUNGFRAU 

as I ascended my feet seemed to grow heavy, and the air 
was so thin that I hesitated to talk on account of the effort 
that speaking entailed. 

In the railroad tunnel inside the mountains we found 
stations here and there, where the cars stopped to allow us 
to walk out through cross tunnels for the view. At some 
of these holes through the rock we were right over glaciers 
that rolled on and on under our eyes. At the Eismeer 
Station, almost two miles above the sea, we were just over 
a great sea of snow of such dazzling whiteness under the 
sun that it was impossible to look at it without dark 
glasses. The snow sea wound its way far down in and out 
under the peaks of the Jungfrau and the Monch, until it 
was lost in a curve in the mountains. As I looked, two 
black figures on skis jumped from the station and flew like 
swallows down the icy surface. One of them tripped and 
rolled over and over, but he recovered his footing and 
followed his fellow, who was already a black speck in the 
distance. 

As we stood there with some of the world’s most mag¬ 
nificent scenery all about us, I heard a party of American 
tourists talking. What do you think was the subject on 
which they were conversing so enthusiastically? Why, 
eating and the prices of food! One man was telling how 
in a hotel in Germany he got a fine meal with wine for 
eight people for five dollars. The others laughed and 
held up their hands and then went on to discuss the cuisine 
of different hotels where they had stayed. As they con¬ 
tinued, the smell and smoke of cooking seemed to rise and 
obscure one of the sublimest pictures on earth. 

But I knew that not all those near me were so unim¬ 
pressed, for among them was a ten-year-old American boy 
35 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

whose earlier characteristic remarks had delighted my 
soul. My conviction that he was a simon-pure American 
was born as we stood outside the Hotel Victoria in Inter¬ 
laken, watching the wonderful Alpine glow that comes just 
at sunset over the face of the Jungfrau. From this point 
the Virgin, as she is called, is set in a framework of rocks 
and forests, and rises snow-white and pure, her head in 
the clouds. For perhaps five minutes during the sunset 
her spotless silver turns almost to gold and she looks 
more majestic than ever. It was at this moment that the 
boy came up and exclaimed as he looked: 

'‘Gee, what a hill!’' 

During the trip we saw many glaciers. I counted six 
on one mountain side at one time, and from here on top of 
the Jungfrau they are to be seen everywhere. There are 
twelve hundred of them, about evenly divided between the 
Swiss and the Austrian Alps. The glaciers of Switzerland 
are the largest, and cover nearly half of the total area of 
sixteen hundred square miles of snow and ice in these 
mountains. 

To hear the Europeans talk, one would think that the 
Alps were the only really great features on the rugged face 
of old Mother Earth. I am willingto concede all they claim 
for their beauty, but when it comes to such expressions 
as the " Biggest, highest, and most stupendous that God 
ever created,” I must voice my objection. It is true that 
these mountains are the backbone of Europe, but that is 
only a wishbone compared to the backbone of Asia. If you 
could take up the Alps and drop them into some of the 
larger valleys of the Himalayas, they would scarcely 
change the landscape in the Asiatic uplands, for they would 
be lost in their new surroundings. 

36 


FROM THE TOP OF THE JUNGFRAU 

Here in the Alps there is not a beautiful view that 
is unmarred by a hotel, and everywhere are people ped¬ 
dling sublimity. On the summit of the Jungfrau and at 
all the mountain stations throughout the country one finds 
women selling picture postcards, alpenstocks, and smoked 
glasses. At every stop I meet a Swiss maiden in a white 
blouse, a black velvet vest laced with white strings, a 
short red skirt, and a snowy white cap, who has pressed 
flowers, edelweiss, and carvings for sale. On the top 
of Mont Blanc 1 was offered St. Bernard puppies, with a 
repetition of the old story of how they rescue lost tourists, 
and whenever 1 go to sleep on a mountain, my rest is 
broken half an hour before sunrise by the horn of the 
guide tooting me up for the view. . . . But, neverthe¬ 

less, it is worth it! 


37 


CHAPTER VI 


VENICE 

C /ING Switzerland by sleeper, I made a night 
trip to Venice and awoke this morning just as 
my train started to cross the lagoons among 
which rises the “Queen of the Adriatic.” Look¬ 
ing out of my car window, I found we were passing 
over swamps cut into blocks of vegetation. A little later 
the swamps disappeared, there was no land at the side of 
the train, and I could look far out over the water to a thin 
strip of green in the distance. There were boats every¬ 
where, long caravans of coal boats pulled by tugs, barges 
of freight moving this way and that, motor boats chugging 
along. After travelling for more than two miles through 
the water, our train stopped at the station with the Grand 
Canal at the front steps. 

1 might have taken one of the small steamers that 
now ply along the main canals of the city, but 1 preferred 
a gondola, a long, narrow boat with its prow and stern up¬ 
turned so that they seemed to rise as high as my head. 
Like all the gondolas of Venice, it was painted jet-black, 
a fashion that dates back to the fifteenth century. At 
that time the Venetians were vying with each other in 
costly decorations on their boats to such an extent that 
a law was passed making black the universal rule. My 
boat was not more than four feet wide and it wobbled as 
1 plumped down in the seat in the centre. The gondolier 

38 



If you can imagine New York’s finest public buildings grouped together 
at the Battery, and 42nd Street moved to the end of Broadway, you will 
have an idea of St. Mark’s Place, the heart of Venice. 











“One of the sights of St. Mark’s is the great flock of pigeons, believed 
to bring good luck to the city. They are so tame that when 1 held out my 
hands my arms were instantly covered with birds.” 













VENICE 


stood upright on the deck behind me and swayed as he 
pushed and pulled his one oar this way and that. He knew 
the short cuts and took me down the Grand Canal and past 
the great palaces that line its whole length. 

Every time I come to Venice I find it hard to realize 
what she is and still harder to realize what she was. 
Other cities are more or less alike. Venice is unique. 
Her population of two hundred thousand is crowded 
together into buildings that occupy a space about seven 
miles in circumference and appear to be afloat in the 
Adriatic. Her streets are lanes of water on which boats 
serve as cabs. Moreover, she is enriched by some of 
the most beautiful specimens of architecture in all Italy 
and adorned with the master strokes of Titian and Tin- 
toretti. 

By the fifteenth century Venice, then in the zenith 
of her power, was one of the great cities of the earth. 
In her dock-yards, the largest in the world, ten thousand 
beams of oak were always ready for the construction of 
new ships. Her merchant vessels sailed all the known 
seas. Her war galleys were feared from the Rock of 
Gibraltar to the Bosporus, and Constantinople acknowl¬ 
edged her sway. Her ships passed beyond the Golden Horn 
and into the Black Sea to trade with Russia, and brought 
goods from Asia to the port of Venice, whence they were 
carried over the Alps to central and northern Europe. 
Thus, five hundred years ago, before Columbus had worked 
out his idea of a new way to the wealth of India, and long 
before the age of modern invention and machinery, Venice 

—held the gorgeous East in fee 
And was the safeguard of the West. 

39 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

All this glorious past is the background of the Venice of 
to-day. 

Though built upon piles driven into the earth, the 
palaces stand up well and, for the most part, the city 
seems as solid as the traditional house built upon the 
rocks. Yet the houses appear everywhere to rise on no 
other foundation than the water. One can scarcely realize 
that Venice is really scattered over one hundred and seven¬ 
teen islands and so has terra firma beneath her buildings. 
Hence, the structures along its canals and streets do not 
lean drunkenly like many of those of Rotterdam, or Am¬ 
sterdam, or other so-called “Venices.” 

1 say streets advisedly, since Venice is a city of streets 
as well as canals. The streets cut up the islands and 
cross the canals on four hundred bridges, some of which 
are as beautifully arched as those of China or Japan. 
In a gondola trip one winds in and out through a labyrinth 
of one narrow waterway after another, shadowed by span 
after span of stone. The bridges are six or eight feet above 
the water and all freight-carrying boats must be loaded 
with this in mind. 

The oldest of the bridges is the Rialto, constructed 
in the sixteenth century to replace the earlier bridge of 
wood. For centuries this was the only one over the Grand 
Canal. It rises twenty-five feet above the water in a 
huge marble span of ninety feet. Little shops are built 
along it, leaving a central alleyway about twenty feet 
wide between them and an outer passage on each side. 
A stream of people is continually passing back and forth 
upon it; for, as in the days when the shrewd merchants 
of Venice droVe their hard bargains here and Antonio 
pledged his pound of flesh to Shylock, this is still a busy 
40 


VENICE 


quarter of the city. Standing on the peak of the Rialto 
bridge one sees streets lined with awnings and filled with 
people. 

A thing that strikes one in looking over Venice is the 
fact that there is not much green. 1 was about to say 
there are no trees, but this is not true. Here and there 
the wealthy owner of a palace has had some earth brought 
in and has planted a tree in his courtyard. Some of the 
larger palaces have real gardens and there are places where 
terraces of vegetation rise up from the water to the ivy- 
covered marble structures along the Grand Canal. 

Riding through Venice in a gondola one can easily 
imagine the cruelties of its past. If he does not raise 
his eyes he might think he was in a city of prisons, for 
the windows and doors of the lower stories are covered 
with rusty iron bars, behind which is a heavy wire net¬ 
ting with a mesh so fine that your little finger would 
not go through. I suppose, though, that these are merely 
precautions against theft. 

The city is wonderfully quiet. I know of no place 
less noisy except perhaps Nijni-Novgorod, the great fair 
city of Russia, between its annual events. While the fair 
lasts it has perhaps three times as many people in it as 
the Venice of to-day, but for the remainder of the year 
it is as dead as Nineveh and Babylon, or Sodom and 
Gomorrah after the fire. Sitting in a Venetian gondola 
one does not hear the honk of the automobile, the rumble of 
the motor truck, the chug-chug-chug of the motorcycle, or 
even the clatter of horses' feet upon the stone sidewalks. 
In fact, there is no street in Venice that a man could safely 
ride through on horseback and there is none wide enough 
for a motorcycle with side car. 

41 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

But let us be going to St. Mark’s Place, the real 
heart of Venice. It is only three quarters of a mile from 
our hotel, so we shall walk. We pass along a busy street 
lined with shops and buzzing with tourists. Venice is for 
ever alive with tourists, a fact of which the storekeepers 
take the utmost advantage. The shops remind us of 
those of Atlantic City, except that the goods displayed 
are more artistic. Scores of places sell only the beads or 
the leather goods for which the town is famed. The throng 
is a gay one and there seems more life and colour in it than 
in the crowds of the Rue de la Paix or the Rue de Rivoli 
in Paris. The people are well-dressed. Venice used to 
be called a city of paupers and it may be one still, but 
one would not judge so from our walk of this morning. 

Winding our way in and out through the narrow walls 
of stores, we come at length to the Piazza of St. Mark, 
the patron saint of Venice. On three sides the great 
square is enclosed by marble palaces blackened by the 
wind and weather of years. On the east side is the pride 
of the city, the Cathedral of St. Mark. At first it was 
only the private chapel of the doge, or chief magistrate, of 
the old Republic of Venice. But it grew in size and im¬ 
portance with the growth of the city state. A law re¬ 
quired every merchant trading to the East to bring back 
something for the adornment of the church. In richness 
of material and decoration it is said to be unique among 
all the churches of the earth. 

St. Mark’s covers acres and is a veritable museum of 
wonders. Volumes have been written about its beauties 
and its treasures. But 1 shall write only of the mosaics 
covering its walls and ceilings. They are on a golden back¬ 
ground, which has given the cathedral the name of the 
42 


VENICE 


“Church of Gold.” Some of the work dates back to the 
tenth century. Here are the stories of the Bible told in 
pictures made of millions of pieces of enamel, marble, and 
gold leaf set together. Some represent only Old Testament 
subjects. In one dome are shown the creation of the world 
and the fall of man. In the next are pictured the Flood, 
the Ark with Noah, and the Tower of Babel. Here are por¬ 
trayed pictures of Joseph being sold down into Egypt by 
his brothers and all the incidents of the history of Moses. 
You may read the life of Christ in these mosaics and the 
wonderful happenings in the lives of the saints. The 
marvel about it is that the little pieces of which these 
pictures are made are each not larger than your little 
finger nail. If you will take four hundred and fifty or¬ 
dinary city lots and pave them with mosaics so that every 
inch of the space is a picture made up of bits of this kind 
you may get some idea of the labour the mosaic decoration 
of St. Mark’s represents. 

Leaving the Cathedral, one passes beneath the four 
bronze horses, which are no one knows how old. Through 
the centuries they have travelled many a mile. They 
were apparently designed for some Roman general’s tri¬ 
umphal arch, but by whose hand remains a mystery. At 
any rate, in 1204 the doge of Venice brought them to his 
city from Constantinople. Here they remained for nearly 
six hundred years. Then Napoleon carried them off and 
set them up in Paris. From the shadow of the Tuileries 
they watched his triumphs, but not for long. After 
Waterloo, they were restored to Venice and mounted once 
more upon their pedestals Even then they could not 
rest undisturbed. A century later, when the city feared 
extinction from the enemy airplanes continually flying 
43 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

back and forth over her and dropping bombs from the 
skies, the bronze horses of St. Mark's were taken down 
and hidden away. After the World War had ended they 
were brought out and set again on their vantage point 
overlooking the Piazza. 

As I gazed up at these beautiful glittering horses to-day 
I saw at least five hundred pigeons perched upon them. 
1 can’t give the actual count, but there were thousands of 
live pigeons hovering over St. Mark’s and filling the 
great square in front of it. They nest in the nooks of 
the palaces surrounding the square, which they practically 
own. No one thinks of disturbing them, and a Venetian 
boy with a bean shooter who would kill one of these birds 
would go instanter to prison. In some way or other the 
people have the idea that they mean good luck to the city. 
In olden times they were sent out from the vestibule of 
the Cathedral on Palm Sunday and during the time of 
the Republic they were fed at government expense. 
There are literally swarms of them and one can sit and 
watch their antics as they feed and play. A good business 
in the square is making photographs of the pigeons eating 
out of the hands and even from the heads of the tourists. 
There are peddlers who sell corn, split peas, and beans to 
those who wish to feed the birds and the photographers 
will take about a half pint of the grain and pour it over 
your hands and even on your head. As soon as they drop 
the corn on you the pigeons come in swarms. I tried 
holding out my hands and soon had so many gathered 
there that my arms ached with their weight. They 
fluttered down also on my head, sinking their claws into 
the wool of my cap and finally pulling it off. 

From St. Mark’s, a smaller plaza, the Piazzetta, stretches 
44 


VENICE 


down to the waters. On the edge of the Piazzetta rise 
two granite columns brought from Syria or Constan¬ 
tinople and set up here in the twelfth century. One 
column is capped by a statue of St. Theodore, once 
patron saint of the Republic, standing on a crocodile, 
while on the other is the winged lion of St. Mark. The 
Venetians have a phrase: ''between Theodore and Mark,'' 
which means about the same as our "between hammer and 
anvil," or "between the devil and the deep blue sea." 
The saying probably comes from the fact that once state 
offenders were put to death on a scaffold set up between 
these columns. Their backs were always turned to the 
city that had cast them off, while their faces looked out 
to sea, the symbol of eternity. Now the old shafts throw 
their shadows upon dozens of gondolas tied up at the 
canal pier, and instead of the cries of the condemned, 
one hears the soft Italian voices of the gondoliers chant¬ 
ing each the advantages of his craft for a swift row up 
the Grand Canal and back to one's hotel. 


45 


CHAPTER VII 


OVER THE PLAINS OF LOMBARDY TO MILAN 

T O-DAY I have been riding over the Lombardy 
Plain from Venice to Milan. To the north I 
could see the low foothills of the Alps gradually 
rising till they met the sky, and to the south 
the fertile fields going on and on to the horizon. The 
whole country is a garden where the luxuriant crops stand 
out against a background of reddish brown soil. In the 
Middle Ages the wool industry of this region was impor¬ 
tant. Now silk has taken the place of wool, and there 
are great groves of mulberry trees, with other crops grow¬ 
ing between the rows. When the Austrian troops held 
this district so much money was made from silk culture 
that it was said the soldiers and the officers lived on mul¬ 
berry leaves. No wonder the sight of these rich plains 
put heart into the cohorts of Hannibal, when, exhausted 
by their march over the Alps, they looked down upon 
them and thought of the loot they might yield. No won¬ 
der that, nearly two thousand years later, Napoleon’s men 
were inspired by the fruitfulness of the fields to sweep down 
from the mountain passes upon the Austrian forces. 

The Po, the largest river in Italy, flows along most 
of the southern boundary of Lombardy, while part of its 
western border is formed by the Ticino, one of the chief 
tributaries of the Po. In the plain are most of the beauti¬ 
ful Italian lakes. The climate is hot in summer, but in 
46 



The original of New York’s Bridge of Sighs,’’ connecting the Tombs 
prison with the trial room, is here in Venice. It joins the Doge’s Palace 
with the jail for common criminals. 

















Many of the Italian estates are farmed on the tenant system under 
contracts that sometimes run for centuries. Others depend on day 
labourers hired from the nearest village at wages we would consider ridicu¬ 
lously low. 







LOMBARDY TO MILAN 


winter, bitterly cold winds bear down upon it from the 
mountains. The farmers offset the scanty rainfall of the 
summers by a system of irrigation works begun in the 
Middle Ages and still so serviceable that it is almost im¬ 
possible for the crops to fail for lack of water. 

The scenes here are different from those of other parts 
of Europe. There are more buildings in the midst of 
the fields and more of the people live out on the farms 
instead of in villages. The cottages are usually of brick 
covered with stucco. It is said that six out of every ten of 
the people of Italy are on the land and that only about ten 
per cent, of her nearly one hundred and eleven thousand 
square miles of area is useless or uncultivated. This one 
tenth is barren rock. It is true that there is much moun¬ 
tainous country that can never be put to the plough, but 
grapes and olives grow on stony slopes, and chestnuts, 
which are an important food of the people, flourish on the 
mountain sides. 

The land is intensively cultivated so that I seemed 
to be rolling through a succession of truck patches. Mixed 
farming appears to be the rule. It is a tradition of the 
Italian farmer that his bread shall be made of his own 
wheat, his salad mixed with his own olive oil, and his 
wine pressed from the grapes out of his own vineyard. 
Corn and rice grow side by side with the vineyards, and 
mulberry trees compete for their share of the sustenance. 
From maize, called by the Italian farmer ‘'Turkish corn,'' 
the people make polenta, which is almost as popular with 
them as macaroni. 

Now and then I saw kilns for drying out the corn. These 
were installed when it was thought that pellagra, the 
scourge of the Italian peasants, was due to eating damp, 
47 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

musty corn. The old method of hanging the corn out¬ 
side the house in the sun still prevails, however, and in 
autumn the garlands of golden grain add to the pictur¬ 
esqueness of the landscape. The worst cases of pellagra 
are now taken to hospitals for special diet and nursing. 
A victim of the disease who is allowed to remain at home 
is supplied with salt free of charge. Salt is a government 
monopoly in Italy, and its price often puts it beyond the 
reach of the poorest peasants. It is against the law even 
to take home a bucket of sea water to get the salt from it. 

As in other parts of Italy, many of the farms of Lom¬ 
bardy are rented. There are several rental systems, but 
perhaps the best is that known as the meneria, under which 
the tenant gets half the crop. A house, a shed for his 
cattle, and a vat for wine-making are furnished him and 
he has also the right to a certain number of the eggs from 
his hens. The landlord pays for all improvements and 
supplies half the oxen. In case of a bad harvest the 
landlord must provide seed grain for the next planting. 
The rented farm is generally small, ranging from ten to 
twenty-five acres. The government agricultural experts 
estimate that there should be a man to every two and a 
half acres. 

Much of the irrigated area belongs to big landowners, 
syndicates, or development companies. One class of 
labourers on such estates lives on the land, rent free, 
drawing wages partly in cash and partly in kind. The 
members of the other class hire out for the best wages they 
can get and maintain themselves in mean little villages. 

Everywhere the vineyards are carefully tended, more 
so now, as a matter of fact, than ever before, for the gov¬ 
ernment is trying to uproot the old haphazard methods 
48 


LOMBARDY TO MILAN 


of the past. Eternal vigilance is the price of wine in 
Italy, especially in the hill country. Here the wind is a 
great foe, rushing down in September, rubbing the bunches 
of grapes together, and knocking off or bruising the fruit so 
that it does not come to the right maturity and sweetness. 
The peasants have a saying that '‘The wind has drunk a 
great deal of wine.'' Another enemy of the grapes and 
of other crops as well is hail. In many districts the people 
shoot into the hail-laden clouds in the hope of breaking 
them up before their downpour can destroy the crops. 

In some places, as the time of the grape harvest ap¬ 
proaches, the leaves are stripped from the vines so that 
the sun may shine full on the fruit, but in others they 
are left on so as to protect it from hail. As the grapes 
ripen the vineyard owner, his wife, and his children mount 
guard night and day against thieves. When the vintage 
begins ox-carts carrying big tubs are driven among the 
vines to gather up the grapes picked into baskets by the 
harvesters. It is considered a sign of a good harvest if 
swarms of earwigs troop out of the tubs when they are 
taken from where they have been stored since the previous 
season. 

The fruit is pressed in the vats in the wine cellars, 
and while machinery is being used more and more for this 
work, many maintain that the old way is the best. These 
winemakers claim that the mechanical presses squeeze the 
stems and seeds, whereas the elastic tread of the human 
foot is exactly what is needed to get only the best from 
the grape. Some of Italy's wine is still trodden out by 
the feet of girls and boys in just the same process that 
Horace celebrates in his odes. Wooden shoes fitted with 
spikes in the soles are worn for the purpose. 

49 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

In the last half century Italy has undergone an agri¬ 
cultural revolution. It used to be that agriculture was 
considered no proper pursuit for the well-born and well- 
educated. A father of the upper classes wished to see 
his son a graduate of a university with the title of doctor 
in this or that branch of learning. Then somebody hit 
on the happy thought of granting the title of doctor to 
those completing a course of study in a high school of 
agriculture, and soon the attitude toward scientific farm¬ 
ing as a profession underwent a change. Italy now has a 
number of agricultural colleges, and special schools for 
teaching oil- and cheese-making, fruit-culture, and cattle- 
breeding. Scattered through the country are experimental 
farms and in some districts the government lends agricul¬ 
tural machinery to the farmers for two weeks at a time. 
Rural credit associations and village banks have been 
organized to make loans to the small farmers. There are 
also cooperative banks that accept deposits of the small¬ 
est sums and lend money on simple notes of hand endorsed 
by one or two signatures. 

Italy is also the home of the International Institute of 
Agriculture founded at Rome to carry out the idea of 
an American, David Lubin. This unique organization 
gathers crop reports from all over the world, and collects 
information about farm labour and other matters relating 
to agriculture. Fifty-two nations support the institute. 

Italy has doubled her farm production in the past 
fifty years. She grows more wheat than anything else, 
and after that come corn and rice. She ranks next to 
France as a wine producer, making more than a million 
gallons a year. 

A glance at a physical map of the country will show 
50 


LOMBARDY TO MILAN 

you that most of the level land is in Lombardy Plain. 
At the top of the Italian “boot” are the Alps, while 
down the leg runs the long, low range of the Apennines. 
The Alps formerly cut off Italy from the rest of Europe, 
but this barrier has been overcome by the railroads. In 
the trough between the two mountain systems lies Lom¬ 
bardy, which has been built up by earth washings brought 
down by the streams. Within the last six centuries the 
delta of the Po has added to the land surface an area equal 
to eight hundred farms of a quarter section each, and the 
ancient port of Adria, which gave its name to the Adriatic, 
is now fifteen miles inland. 

Though Italy is in the same latitude as Indiana, its 
climate is more like that of Florida; for the peninsula gets 
warm breezes from Africa and the Mediterranean. In 
the southern part and in Sicily lemons, oranges, figs, 
and other sub-tropical fruits grow as well as in southern 
California. 

The country has little valuable iron ore and prac¬ 
tically no good coal, so that she must import fuel for 
her factories. But development of her abundant water¬ 
power, which is being vigorously pushed, will eventually 
make her independent of foreign coal. It is estimated 
that Italy has in her rivers and streams a total of twelve 
million horsepower. If this were all developed it would 
mean the equivalent of sixty million tons of coal in a year. 
Like Switzerland, she has a great programme for the elec¬ 
trification of four thousand miles, or nearly half, of her 
railroads, most of which are operated by the government. 

Her dependence on foreign raw materials is one of Italy’s 
great problems. She must bring in, besides coal, nearly 
half her food, as well as the cotton and the wool needed 

31 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

by her factories. The truth is, the country has a great 
many mouths to feed in proportion to its size. If the 
United States were as thickly populated we should have 
one thousand million people, or nearly ten times as many 
as we have now. In an area about equal to that of New 
Mexico, Italy is supporting a population of more than 
thirty-eight millions, or three hundred and forty to the 
square mile. Over-population has caused much poverty, 
especially in the southern part of the country, and has led 
to extensive emigration. The fact that the United States, 
which used to admit a large percentage of Italian immi¬ 
grants, now restricts their numbers is a hardship for this 
country. Not only did the departure of the emigrants 
mean fewer stomachs to be filled, but the money they re¬ 
turned to their native land was an important part of the 
national income. 

While Lombardy has more than five hundred and forty 
people to the square mile, it is agriculturally and com¬ 
mercially the most prosperous section of the country. 
Again and again, especially as we neared Milan, I was im¬ 
pressed with the flourishing industrial life of the region. 
We passed the linen mills, woollen mills, silk mills, and 
machine shops, and finally drove into Milan, Italy’s chief 
railway centre and silk market and one of the three big 
industrial cities of the country. Genoa, the principal 
seaport and a rival of Marseilles, is one of Milan’s com¬ 
mercial competitors, and Turin, where the Fiat cars are 
made in the largest automobile factory of Europe, is the 
other. 

After the quiet and dreaminess of Venice, Milan seems 
to have the atmosphere of a Pittsburgh or a Chicago. 
Indeed, it is the most modern city in Italy and looks in 
52 


LOMBARDY TO MILAN 


some respects like an American town. In shape it is a 
polygon and its centre is the fine Piazza del Duomo, from 
which many broad streets radiate in all directions. These 
streets are connected by an inner circle of boulevards, 
constructed just outside a canal. This canal marks the 
site of the moat of the medieval city, for despite her up- 
to-date appearance, Milan is very old. Some of the 
streets are wide, it is true, but others are so narrow that 
motor cars have to drive carefully in passing. 

Prominent features of the business section are the ar¬ 
cades here and there. The principal one is that of Victor 
Emanuel in the heart of the city and within a stone's throw 
of the Cathedral. This great arcade, which is about one 
hundred feet high and nearly as wide, is beautifully deco¬ 
rated. Its ceiling is of glass which at night is brilliantly 
lighted by electricity. The floors are in mosaic. The arcade 
is lined with fine stores, the big display windows looking 
out on the passages. Like the Piazza San Marco in Venice 
it is the great meeting, promenade, and dining place of 
the city. All day long it is alive with shoppers, and in 
the evening is filled with the world of Milan and his wife. 
Beautiful women and girls and handsome, bareheaded 
men walk back and forth until twelve o'clock at 
night. 

The biggest and best thing in Milan is the Cathedral, 
which occupies one end of the Piazza del Duomo. It dates 
back to 1386 and is built of brick cased in white marble. 
The stone is sadly smokestained since the city has become 
a manufacturing centre, but the whole is still most beauti¬ 
ful. The buttresses and roof are adorned with one hun¬ 
dred and thirty-five pinnacles and twenty-three hundred 
marble statues decorate the exterior. It is covered with 
53 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

carvings in high and low relief, representing scenes from 
the Scriptures, almost every one of them a work of fine 
art. The interior is wonderfully impressive. The build¬ 
ing is in the form of a cross. The huge columns of pink 
marble upholding the mighty roof are of indescribable 
beauty and slenderness and I defy any man, no matter 
what his religion, to go through this cathedral unmoved. 
Forty thousand people may gather here at one time and 
unite in the worship of God, who gave to man the mind to 
conceive and the power to execute such a masterpiece. 

Besides being enriched with noble buildings and artis¬ 
tic masterpieces handed down from the past, Milan has 
vast wealth gained from her industries and her part in 
the productive enterprises of northern Italy. The city 
is the chief financial centre of Italy. Its bankers and 
commercial magnates do business with all the world. 

Genoa, Italy’s principal port, is less than one hundred 
miles distant and is the mouth through which the fac¬ 
tories and the mills are fed with the raw materials from 
abroad. It has direct steamship service to all Mediter¬ 
ranean ports, to England, New York, Asia, and Australia. 
Here are landed coal from Great Britain, cotton from the 
United States, cotton-seed oil for mixing with the native 
oil, and iron, petroleum, and other products. Although 
Genoa’s exports are large, they are usually far exceeded 
in value by her imports. Since the completion of the 
St. Gotthard tunnel through the Alps this port has become 
also an outlet for the manufactured goods of Switzerland, 
southern Germany, and part of Austria. 

The city itself is only about half the size of Milan. Like 
an amphitheatre, it rises from the water in a series of 
tiers and terraces, on which are many splendid marble 
54 



All day long the Arcade of Victor Emmanuel is alive with shoppers 
and in the evening it is filled with the world of Milan and his wife. Through 
its arches one glimpses the pinnacles of the great Cathedral. 










The poorest Italian peasant often has better olive oil than the Ameri¬ 
can housekeeper who pays extravagantly for “pure Italian,” which is 
frequently only cottonseed oil mixed in Italy with the real article and 
reshipped to the United States. 



LOMBARDY TO MILAN 


palaces. Every American school boy knows of Genoa as 
the birthplace of Columbus, but it took the Genoese nearly 
four hundred years to decide to honour the discoverer of 
America with the statue which now stands before the rail¬ 
road station. John Cabot, who saw the coast of New¬ 
foundland and Nova Scotia before Columbus set foot on 
continental America, was also born in Genoa. 


55 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE ETERNAL CITY 


Go thou to Rome,—at once the Paradise, 
The grave, the city, and the wilderness. 


S O SAID Keats. Yet I think Rome is less than a 
Paradise, more than a city, and far more than a 
I wilderness of ruins, or the grave of an ancient 
civilization. There are so many Romes—the 
Rome of the Forum and the Colosseum, the Rome of 
St. Peter’s and the Pope, the Rome of the king and 
government of Italy, the Rome of the artist, the archae¬ 
ologist, and the historian, and the combination of all 
these, the Eternal City, that is the pride of the Italians and 
the ‘'port of dreams” for thousands. 

I am reminded of a story told of the learned Pope Leo 
XIII. He often asked the foreign visitor: 

“How long have you been in Rome?” 

If the answer was, “A week. Your Holiness,” the pontiff 
would say: 

“Then you must feel as if you know Rome very well!” 
If the visitor replied that he had been in the city for 
six months. Pope Leo’s remark would be: 

“Then you have begun to look about you a little bit.” 
But if the foreigner should say that he had lived in 
Rome for several years, the Pope would smilingly say: 

“Ah, then you have discovered that a whole lifetime is 
not too long to learn what Rome really is!” 

56 



THE ETERNAL CITY 


The city seems enormous, for it is spread over an im¬ 
mense area. One reason for this is the fact that a large 
part of it is taken up with ruins, churches, and historic 
monuments of one kind or another. The town is actually 
no larger than St. Louis or Boston, but if you were to 
reproduce Rome on the site of either of the others, you 
would have to allot a big space in the heart of it for the 
relics of the past. The Forum, as big as an eighty-acre 
farm, is surrounded by the business buildings of modern 
Rome. The Colosseum is another great field of stone and 
mortar right in the midst of the business section. St. 
Peter’s and the Vatican occupy as much land as the 
Colosseum. Almost anywhere you could throw a stone 
and hit a church taking up an acre or so of ground. 

Most of the city is on the left bank of the Tiber, rising 
partly on the plain of the ancient Field of Mars, and 
partly on the surrounding hills. On the right bank of the 
river are St. Peter’s and the Vatican. Modern Rome is 
confined chiefly to the plain. The heights where stood the 
ancient mistress of the world were almost uninhabited 
during the Middle Ages, and only within comparatively 
recent years have they begun to be reoccupied. Yet these 
seven hills of Rome add greatly to its beauty. The Pala¬ 
tine, where Cicero lived and where Augustus, the first of 
the Roman emperors, built his huge palace, is now a park 
and verdure hides the ruins of the halls where succeeding 
emperors lorded it over the multitude. A curious relic 
here is a little stone altar chiselled with the Latin words, 
Sei deo, sei deivcz —to the Unknown God. I have been 
told that this was set up to the patron god of Rome and 
that only the priests knew the name of the deity to whom 
it was really dedicated. Even they did not write it down, 
^7 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

but handed it on from generation to generation, for it was 
feared that if the common people should know it, one 
of them might betray it to an enemy, who would surely 
bribe the god with offerings and sacrifices to cease to pro¬ 
tect Rome. 

Between the Palatine and the Capitoline, on which rose 
the magnificent Temple of Jupiter, the most sacred shrine 
of the Roman world, are the ruins of the Forum. Upon the 
Quirinal is the royal palace of the kings of Italy. On the 
sides of the Viminal the modern city grows apace. Last 
night I dined upon the Aventine, not going up in a chariot, 
on horseback, or afoot, as did Caesar and Cicero, but in an 
Italian automobile, which landed me at the Castle of the 
Caesars. Climbing some ragged stone steps past ruined 
columns, we came out at length upon a stone platform 
where a gay crowd was dining in the open-air restaurant 
overlooking the myriad lights of the city. 

As we ate delicious food amid the laughter and light talk 
of the twentieth century, my imagination unreeled before 
me a series of moving pictures. First I saw in my mind’s 
eye the burial of Remus upon this hillside, after he had 
been slain by Romulus in a fit of jealous rage. That was 
twenty-six centuries and more ago. Next I beheld these 
slopes alive with a surging mob of plebeians, their hearts 
aflame with the injustices and oppressions of the patri¬ 
cians. There followed terrible pictures of the wild orgies of 
seven thousand men and women engaged in their de¬ 
grading worship of Bacchus. Again the scene changed, 
and across my mental screen flitted a figure frail and 
small, yet with an indescribable dignity of bearing. He 
moved about in a cluster of men with dark, Hebraic coun¬ 
tenances and long beards, who appeared to be hanging 
58 


THE ETERNAL CITY 


upon his every word. And recalling that he was a visitor 
to Jews of the Rome of two thousand years ago, 1 gave the 
picture a title: 

'' Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, 
separated unto the gospel of God.’' 

But here my reverie was interrupted by the waiter pre¬ 
senting me with such a substantial bill that 1 came back 
with a jolt to the world of to-day. Since the spell was 
broken, 1 climbed into my car and was soon again in the 
midst of modern Rome. 

The principal streets of the business city of Rome are the 
Via Nazionale and its continuation, the Corso, one of the 
most brilliant avenues in all Europe. During the season 
both of these thoroughfares are thronged with pedestrians 
and vehicles. A large part of the traffic of Rome is still 
pulled along by horses, though the taxis are also numerous 
and cheap. The old-fashioned victoria drawn by one 
horse, which the driver usually flogs unmercifully, is most 
prevalent. There are also red street cars, which are a bit 
shorter than ours and get their power through overhead 
trolleys. Carts drawn by mules decorated with bells and 
coloured fringes, so that they look as if they were ready 
for a holiday, bump over the cobbled pavements. Donkey 
carts are not so common here as in Naples. 

One of the striking things about Rome is the number 
and the beauty of its fountains. The finest of them is the 
Trevi, which used to be called Virgin Water, either because 
of its purity or because of the tradition that a young girl 
pointed out this spring to the engineers of Agrippa. They 
built a subterranean channel fourteen miles long to con¬ 
duct the stream that issues here to the baths of that 
warrior and statesman beside the Pantheon. The same 
59 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

aqueduct, restored from time to time, carries daily more 
than seventeen and a half million gallons of the best water 
in Rome. The Trevi is in the heart of the city and in the 
evenings the people gather here and listen to its splashings. 

There is a tradition that the traveller who throws a 
small coin into these waters will surely return to Rome. As 
1 stood on the edge of it yesterday I asked my guide “ How 
much shall I throw?'' From the crowd of loafers sitting 
on the edge of the fountain came, in accents unmistakably 
of the lower West Side of New York: “T'row in a dollar 
and I'll dive and get it!" 

Evidently here was one of the many returned sons of 
Italy who had brought back from America some of our 
own ideas of what is *'good businesSc" 

This morning 1 crossed the Tiber to St. Peter's. There 
are many bridges but I happened to take the one named for 
King Humbert I, the beloved Italian monarch assassinated 
at the beginning of this century. Dominating the bridge 
on the right bank is the great Palace of Justice, of which 
my guide remarked, “It is a big palace, but has little 
justice." 

Under the shadow of the huge pile 1 saw a hundred 
or so young Romans swimming and diving, dodging about 
in canoes, or sunning themselves on the sand. The Tiber 
was neither so swift nor so tawny as it often is. Some¬ 
times it is a raging torrent of yellow water that comes 
tearing down from the Apennines full of the sediment it 
has gathered from the mountains and the Campagna. 
Because of past disastrous floods the government has en¬ 
closed it with massive stone masonry so that, seen from a 
height, the river looks like a walled fosse of the Middle 
Ages. One day, perhaps, the talk of making a ship canal 


THE ETERNAL CITY 


of the Tiber so as to bring the Mediterranean right into 
the city may end in action. Rome is only about half an 
hour by motor from the sea and if it were in the United 
States the canal would probably have been built long ago. 
All the plans and the specifications are ready and only the 
money is lacking. 

The approach to St. Peter's is through a great plaza in 
the shape of an ellipse. From the Cathedral, stone colon¬ 
nades, surmounted by more than one hundred and fifty 
statues of saints, curve in half crescents about both sides 
of the space. Two fountains play in the plaza and in the 
middle is the obelisk which the Emperor Caligula brought 
from Heliopolis, the city of the sun god in the Nile delta. 
It was first set up in the Vatican Circus at Rome, where 
Nero held his shows and chariot races and practised his 
horrible cruelties upon the early Christians. In the six¬ 
teenth century the obelisk was removed from that site to 
the space in front of St. Peter's. There is a story that 
Pope Sixtus V, who had ordered its removal, had decreed 
that there should be absolute silence as the obelisk was 
raised. But just as the men had hauled it almost to the 
perpendicular it was seen that one of the ropes was slipping. 
Then a sailor in the crowd yelled out, '‘Throw water on 
the rope." His advice was followed, the rope tightened, 
and the obelisk went safely into place. The crowd held 
its breath at the thought of what would befall him for 
having disobeyed the Pope's command. But instead of 
punishment, his family was awarded forever the privilege of 
supplying palms to St. Peter s on Palm Sunday. Sixtus V, 
by the way, was that “strong man" of his day of whom 
Queen Elizabeth declared: “He is the one man who is 
worthy of my hand." 


6i 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

Though the plaza forms a magnificent approach to the 
greatest church in Christendom, the Cathedral is best 
viewed from a distant height, so that one may get the full 
effect of Michael Angelo’s vast dome. Seen from the level, 
the dome is dwarfed by the great facade stretching across 
the front of the church. When measured by the eye in 
close perspective, St. Peter’s does not seem as tall as the 
Capitol at Washington, though it is in reality twice as high. 

The interior is enormously impressive. One can 
scarcely take in the immense size of the church and the 
huge scale on which every detail is worked out. For 
example, the two fonts for holy water near the entrance 
to the nave have marble basins upheld by cherubs. When 
I looked at them from the door, these cherubs seemed to 
be about the size of the average baby, but when I stood 
beside them I saw that the leg of each one was as big 
around as my waist and that its head would have been a 
tight fit in a half bushel basket. Looking across the nave 
1 saw the people on the other side as mere pigmies. So 
perfect are the proportions of the whole that it takes such 
comparisons as these to make one realize that here is space 
for eighty thousand people to gather at once. 

The statue of St. Peter is a sitting figure of more than 
life-size, cast in bronze that looks as if it had been alloyed 
with silver or pewter. Although it is not by any means 
beautiful, the statue is rather imposing. The head is very 
ugly, with hair and beard of short, tight curls. In the 
right hand the Founder of the Church holds a key, while 
the left is raised in blessing. The right foot has been 
kissed by so many thousands of worshippers that it is 
smooth and shiny and the first three toes have been worn 
down for an inch or more. 


62 



The home port of Christopher Columbus now has steamship con¬ 
nections with all parts of the world and is the mouth through which the 
industries of northern Italy are fed with raw materials. 



Italian seaport towns are famous for their smells which assault the 
visitor at long range. The celebrated “Wash Alley” of Genoa accounts 
for a part of the redolence of that city. 
















The entire population of Savannah could gather in St. Peter’s, the 
biggest Christian church in the world. Michael Angelo planned the vast 
dome, beneath which is the High Altar where only the Pope himself may 
say mass. 










THE ETERNAL CITY 

Some say that the statue was made in the fifth century, 
others that it is as recent as the thirteenth. One story has 
it that it was originally a statue of Jupiter and was re¬ 
modelled by the Christians, who put on a new head and 
new arms. I do not by any means vouch for the truth 
of this tale, but it does seem to me that the bronze toga 
draped about the saint might have been designed for a 
pagan image and the head does not appear to belong with 
the body. 

Beneath the dome stands the High Altar where only the 
Pope may read mass. Above it is a bronze canopy ninety- 
five feet high made from metal taken from the Pantheon. 
In front of the altar is the tomb of St. Peter, to which 
one descends by marble steps. On the balustrade about 
the crypt are nearly one hundred lighted golden lamps. 
Something like five hundred years ago the Roman nobles 
made up a fund to keep these lights burning for all time 
to come, and they have been glowing here ever since. 

Only the body of St. Peter rests in his Cathedral. His 
head is interred with that of St. Paul beneath the high 
altar of St. John in the Lateran, called the “mother and 
head of all churches.’' This church, which is in the eastern 
section of the city, was a part of the old Lateran Palace 
bestowed by Constantine on the Pope of his day. Until 
the fourteenth century, when Gregory XI established the 
official residence at the Vatican, the Lateran was the 
home of the popes. It is still a part of the Papal See, and 
is used as a museum of Christian and secular antiquities. 
St. John’s has suffered so much from fire, earthquake, 
pillage, and the hand of the restorer that it is now little 
save a big modern church. 

I found much more interesting the Scala Santa, the 
63 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

building near the Lateran that contains the twenty-eight 
marble steps which Christ is said to have ascended when 
they formed the stairway of Pilate’s house in Jerusalem. 
They are covered over with wood to keep them from being- 
worn away, for they may be ascended only on the knees, 
and generations of pilgrims have climbed thus from the 
lowest to the topmost step. Pius IX himself made the 
painful ascent in 1870 on the eve of the entry of the Italian 
troops into Rome when the temporal power of the popes 
came to an end. It was while toiling up the Sacred 
Stairs that Luther heard a voice from heaven declaring 
that the way to salvation was by faith as well as by works. 
At Easter time, especially on Good Friday, many kneeling 
Catholics go up the flight, but, fortunately for those not 
so devoutly inclined, there is a stairway on each side that 
may be used in the ordinary way. At the top of the steps 
one may look down through a barred window into the 
Sancta Sanctorum, consecrated as the private chapel of 
the popes. 


64 


CHAPTER IX 

THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME 

T he greater part of to-day I have spent in the 
Roman Forum, the spot on which perhaps more 
history has been enacted than on any other of 
the globe. My “inward eye’’ is still dazzled by 
hundreds of pictures showing the story of Rome from the 
time that Romulus and Remus fought over laying her 
foundations, through the proud days when she was mis¬ 
tress of the known world, until she lay exhausted and 
despoiled by the Vandals. Twelve hundred years of 
history, much of it most glorious, are mirrored in the ruins 
about the old market place and centre of the Roman 
people. 

The Forum is now a great sunken space with masses of 
debris covering the stone floor. The remains of columns 
and capitals lie here and there, and the ruins of the storied 
buildings of the past rise from it. Here is an old palace 
wall, the Corinthian columns showing all that is left of 
its wonderful beauty. Flowers are growing in the Forum 
and trees have sprung up among the stones. I noticed the 
flaming blossoms of the hibiscus on the edge of the old 
palace of Caligula and picked a daisy from a crevice in the 
Temple of Marcus Aurelius. I saw what seemed to me 
65 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

a rose flowering in the gray vault of Caesar and thought 
of Omar Khayyam’s 

I sometimes think that never blows so red 
The rose as where some buried Caesar bled; 

That every hyacinth the garden wears 
Dropt in her lap from some once lovely head. 

A little more than a century ago this treasure vault of 
archaeology was merely a cow pasture, far down beneath 
which lay the annals of Rome. Early in the nineteenth 
century, systematic exploration and excavation began. 
After Italy became a united kingdom the government took 
charge of the work, so that the most ancient days of the city 
have been brought back to us by the remains unearthed. 

The space between the Palatine and the Capitoline 
now occupied by the Forum was once a swamp, in the 
midst of which was the Lake of Curtius. Into this lake 
plunged the Sabine leader when hard pressed by the 
Romans after the rape of the Sabine women. Here ap¬ 
peared a yawning chasm which threatened to engulf the 
young city and which the soothsayers declared would not 
close until Rome’s most valuable possession was thrown 
into it. Then Marcus Curtius, a youth of noble birth, 
vowing that Rome could have nothing more precious than 
a brave citizen, rode fully armed into the chasm, which 
immediately closed over him. 

In the sixth century B.C. the marshy plain was drained 
and became the civic centre of Rome. Here assemblies 
were held, orators declaimed, and athletes gave exhibitions, 
while the people looked on from the galleries built over the 
surrounding porticoes. There were also shops of various 
kinds. Those were the days when the soldier, Virginius, 
snatched a knife from a butcher’s block in the Forum and 
66 


THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME 

plunged it into the heart of his beautiful young daughter, 
Virginia, rather than have her fall a victim to the lust of 
Appius Claudius, the decemvir. But with the growth of 
the city and its business more than one forum was needed, 
and a number of judicial and mercantile fora were estab¬ 
lished, while the Forum Romanum was enlarged and 
beautified. 

The Forum was more than half a mile long and about 
half as wide. In the days of the Empire it was surrounded 
by magnificent temples and palaces, the remains of some 
of which may still be studied. Whole books have been 
written about these fragments and years of study could 
be put on all for which they stand, but I shall have to 
content myself with telling you of only a few of the things 
that interested me. 

At the northwestern side of the Forum rises the marble 
arch erected seventeen hundred years ago to the Emperor 
Septimius Severus by his two sons, Caracalla and Geta. 
But Geta’s name is not now on the inscription across the 
front, for Caracalla erased it after he had had his brother 
and co-emperor murdered in his mother's arms. On one 
side of the arch is a round brick core, the remainder of 
the Umbilicus, the monument once marking the exact 
centre of the city. Almost in the shadow of the arch is 
the Black Stone, a square of ground paved in black marble 
inscribed in an ancient tongue and said to mark the grave 
of Romulus. Nearly opposite the Arch of Septimius 
Severus at this end of the Forum rise the eight granite 
columns of the Temple of Saturn, which was dedicated 
to the god of crops five hundred years before Christ. In 
the cellars of the temple were stored the public funds. 
Here and there on the paving of the Forum one sees coins 
67 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

half melted and sunk into the stone. The explanation is 
that once when the temple was on fire the money was trans¬ 
ferred from the burning building and in the hurry some 
of it was dropped and left on the floor. The Italian govern¬ 
ment, which is extremely careful of its antiquities, has 
protected many of these coins by covering them with glass. 

On the road in front of the temple have been found 
traces of the Golden Milestone set up by the Emperor 
Augustus in the glorious times when all roads led to 
Rome. Upon this column were inscribed the names and 
distances of the chief towns on the highways radiating 
from the city. The milestone stood at the foot of a flight 
of steps leading up to the rostrum from which Cicero thun¬ 
dered forth some of his attacks upon Mark Antony. 
When Caesar had been killed and Antony was in control, 
Cicero, balked by unfavourable winds in his efforts to flee 
by ship, returned to his villa, exclaiming, ‘‘Let me die in 
the country which I have so often saved.’' He was killed 
by a man he had befriended and his head was brought to 
Antony and his wife, Fulvia, as they sat at a banquet. 
Antony heaped abuses on it and Fulvia drew a gold pin 
from her hair and thrust it through the tongue that had 
said so much against her and her husband. Then the head 
and the hands of the greatest orator of Rome were nailed 
to the rostrum. This platform was a stone structure, 
seventy-eight feet long and forty feet wide, adorned with 
statues and tablets. In front of the temple tomb of 
Julius Caesar on the eastern end of the Forum was the 
Julian rostrum. Here stood Antony with the bloody gar¬ 
ment of the murdered Caesar and swayed the mob by 
his wonderful oration until they were ready to do his will. 
Only thirteen years later Augustus decorated this platform 
68 


THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME 

with the beaks of the ships he had captured at the battle of 
Actium, where he won from Antony the mastery of the 
world. 

Most beautiful are the three Parian marble columns, 
nearly fifty feet tall and five feet in diameter, which were 
once part of a majestic temple to Castor and Pollux. A 
shrine was built to these twin gods in memory of the help 
they gave the Romans in their fight against the league 
of Latin cities about five hundred years before Christ 
was born. You recall the story of how the Romans under 
Aulus were sore beset when, all at once, at the head of their 
ranks there appeared a princely pair clad in white armour 
and mounted upon snowy steeds. Then— 


“Rome to the charge!** cried Aulus, 

“The foe begins to yield! 

Charge for the hearth of Vesta, 

Charge for the Golden Shield! 

Let no man stop to plunder. 

But slay, and slay, and slay; 

The Gods who live forever 
Are on our side to-day.** 

And close by the temple ruins there still bubbles the 
fountain where, after the battle was won and they had 
galloped to Rome with the good news. Castor and Pollux 
washed their gory horses 


.in the well 

That springs by Vesta*s fane. 

And straight away they mounted. 
And rode to Vesta’s door; 

Then, like a blast, away they passed. 
And no man saw them more. 

69 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

Near this fountain of Juturna are the remains of the 
circular Temple of Vesta, where the sacred fire was always 
kept alight by the Vestal Virgins. In the shrine were 
treasured the seven sacred objects upon possession of 
which depended the safety of Rome. The most important 
of these was the Palladium, the crude statue of Minerva 
that /Tneas brought with him from Troy. The sacred 
shield that fell from heaven in the time of the good old 
king Numa, the founder of the order of the Vestals, was 
confided to special priests and not to the shrine of Vesta. 
Besides keeping the fire burning on the altar, the Virgins 
had to offer daily prayers for the welfare of the state and 
bring water every day from a sacred spring for the cere¬ 
monial sweeping and sprinkling of the temple. If any of 
them allowed the fire to go out she was scourged by the 
Pontifex Maximus, or High Priest, while the Vestal who 
broke her vow of chastity was buried alive. 

Judging by the remains of their home, near the temple, 
the Vestals lived well. On the upper floor of the two-story 
building may be traced a suite of baths and sleeping rooms 
lined with polished marble and paved with mosaics. On 
the lower floor are the ruins of storerooms, a kitchen, and 
quarters for the slaves appointed by the government to 
serve these priestesses. In one part of the building are 
statues of the Chief Vestals, who acted somewhat as 
Mother Superiors to the others. The inscriptions on some 
of them show that they were erected by people grateful 
for favours secured for them by the influence of the Ves¬ 
tals. Indeed, the Virgins were a privileged and influential 
group. They occupied the best seats at the theatres and 
were allowed to go to the gladiatorial combats. They 
took a prominent part in all the religious and state cere- 
70 



Rome is divided by the Tiber, which is heavily walled in on account 
of freshets. The dome of St. Peter’s rises above the right bank, but 
most of the modern city is on the left side of the river. 



Under the walls of the huge Palace of Justice, by the King Humbert 
Bridge, modern young Italy goes swimming and paddles canoes in the 
Tiber. 























The everyday business of Rome goes on right under the shadow of the 
ruins of the Temple of Saturn, consecrated in the fifth century B.C., and 
sweeps past the Mamertine Prison where Peter and Paul suffered for 
their faith in Christ and His teachings. 


















THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME 


monies, were exempt from taxation, and might drive 
through the streets in carriages. After their thirty years 
of service to the state they might retire to private life 
and even marry, but judging by the faces of the statues 
I saw, I should say they seldom got proposals. From one 
pedestal the name and inscription have been erased because 
the Vestal to whom the statue was set up became a 
Christian in 364 A.D. This was at the time when the 
worship of Vesta was dying out and there is a story that 
along about the end of the fourth century the wife of a 
Vandal chieftain took a valuable necklace from one of the 
statues, as she laughed at the remonstrances of a lone old 
hag, the last survivor of the Vestal Virgins. 

As 1 sat in the Forum thinking of these things, I heard a 
guttural whir in the air, and looking up, 1 saw an airplane 
cutting the sky overhead. What, I wonder, do the ghosts 
of the Vestals think of such things when they return and 
hover about their old home? 

I can imagine that business in the Forum sometimes 
adjourned so that the people might hurry over to shows in 
the Colosseum close by; just as our national legislators 
take an afternoon off to go to the ball game. I have seen 
this great amphitheatre under almost every change of 
aspect it has known for the last generation. When I came 
here first it was covered with moss, and Nature seemed 
to be trying to hide some of the wounds of time. To-day, 
in the bright sunlight, the ruins look as bare and gray as 
an old, rainwashed bone. The moss of the ages has been 
scraped away and the structure looks as if it had had 
a bath of soap and lye and ashes. As I photographed 
it this afternoon a ten-ton truck came rumbling by and 
the smell of gasoline rose to my nostrils. 

71 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

When 1 went again to see it this evening, the whole thing 
had changed. The moon gave just enough light to smooth 
all the rough edges and to touch the giant ruin with beauty. 
I strolled about the arena, climbed up into the various 
rows of galleries, and finally sat down in what twenty- 
five hundred years ago were the bleachers and tried 
to picture the ancient spectacle. Gladiators, Christian 
martyrs, lions and tigers with jaws dripping with the 
blood of the followers of Christ, all passed under my eyes. 
I could imagine the scene in '‘Quo Vadis,” in which the 
beautiful maiden is brought into the ring tied to the horns 
of a bull. I could see the mimic naval engagements when 
the arena was flooded and the forces on the boats fought 
for the entertainment of the spectators. 1 saw great walls 
as high as a sixteen-story building alive with a mass of 
humanity. Some say that eighty-seven thousand people 
could be accommodated here at one time. Others put 
the number at fifty thousand. 

After the Colosseum was completed by the Emperor 
Titus, the conqueror of Jerusalem, it was dedicated with 
one hundred days of gladiatorial combats and contests 
between men and beasts. Five thousand animals were 
killed and fully one hundred men. A hundred and seventy 
years later, shows almost as stupendous were staged here 
by the Emperor Philip in celebration of the thousandth 
anniversary of the founding of the city. At last Constan¬ 
tine forbade throwing Christians to the wild beasts and 
in 405 Honorius put a stop to gladiatorial combats. It 
was in that year, so the story goes, that the monk, Tele- 
machus, rushed into the arena in the midst of the gladia¬ 
tors and commanded them, in the name of the Saviour, to 
leave off slaughtering one another. He himself was slain 

72 


THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME 


by the enraged combatants, but his death made a great 
impression on the spectators. Wild beasts were baited 
in the arena for another hundred years, however, and it 
was not until the sixth century that the building was aban¬ 
doned to the ravages of time, lightning, and earthquakes. 

From the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, the 
Colosseum, like the other imperial ruins of Rome, served 
as a quarry for builders. The marble facing was torn olT, 
the metal clamps that held its slabs and blocks together 
were gouged out when iron was scarce, statues and frescoes 
were carried away, and stonemasons even burned marble 
from it in their kilns to make lime. The amphitheatre 
was used as a fort, for markets and shops, and once it even 
housed a woollen factory. In 1750 Pope Benedict XIV 
consecrated the Colosseum by setting up the Stations of 
the Cross inside it and thus ended further vandalism. 

Thirty thousand Jewish captives are said to have 
worked on the construction of the mighty amphitheatre. 
It is built in the form of an ellipse and covers six acres. 
The walls rise to a height of a hundred and sixty feet in 
four tiers and there are eighty archways serving as en¬ 
trances. All except four were for the admission of the 
public, two were for the gladiators and the processions, 
and two were reserved for the emperor and his court and 
for the high officials. Beneath the arena were corridors 
leading to the dens of the wild beasts, which were lifted by 
machinery through trap doors to the level of the stage. 
The spectators were shielded from rain or sun by immense 
sailcloths, manipulated by detachments of sailors from 
the fleet in the Bay of Naples. 

I included Naples in my itinerary this time especially 
because of the excavations at Pompeii, which have revealed 
73 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

even more fully than have those at the Forum the every¬ 
day life under Roman civilization. Since 1748, when a 
peasant’s spade happened to turn up some ancient uten¬ 
sils, workmen have been delving there and bringing to 
light bit by bit the life of the city buried and lost for 
eighteen hundred years. 

All this is easily reached on the cars from Naples, which 
make the sixteen-mile run in an hour. We go out through 
the most densely populated, the noisiest, and the smelliest 
town in Europe. The streets of Naples, especially in the 
tenement district and along the sea front, overflow with 
men, women, children, goats, donkeys, carts, and wagons, 
and reek with the odours of cooking, drying linen, fish, 
garlic, unwashed humanity, the sea, and nobody knows 
what else besides. There are men selling fish, and women 
frying potatoes, rice balls, and all sorts of indigestible 
things in kettles of dingy boiling lard. Goats are being 
driven into the houses and up the stairs to be milked at 
the doors of customers’ apartments. The people seem to 
live in the streets, making here their toilets and their love 
with the same lack of embarrassment. Gangs of boys and 
men, stretched at full length on the pavements, doze in the 
hot sun. From the balconies of the blue, pink, white, violet, 
or bright yellow houses hang laundry, rags, and strings of 
new-made spaghetti. In the midst of these bloom flower 
boxes that often adorn even the poorest tenement windows. 

Naples, which is about the same size as Baltimore or 
Boston, is the largest city and second seaport of Italy. It 
deserves the phrase, ''See Naples and die,” not because 
of any special beauty in the city itself, but because of its 
magnificent setting on the hills sweeping up from the 
wonderful Bay of Naples and arched by azure skies. 
74 


THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME 


Twenty miles to the south lies the lovely island of Capri, 
where some say the sirens dwelt. On the east Vesuvius 
sulks and broods over the scene, ready, the Romans 
declare, to do to wicked Naples what it did in the first 
century after Christ to licentious Pompeii and Hercula¬ 
neum. 

Until 79 A.D. Vesuvius was regarded as an ordinary 
peak. But on the 24th of August in that year there came 
first an earthquake and then a dark cloud, spreading like 
a black fleece over the summit. Finally, with a great 
roar, the top of the mountain was blown off and masses 
of lava, mud, stones, and ashes were hurled out. 
In a few days Pompeii was covered with twenty feet of 
ashes, beneath which, it is estimated, there lay buried two 
thousand of her population. Now the patient work of 
years has uncovered about half of the ancient city and we 
can see how like our own were the nature and the activities 
of the men and women of centuries ago. 

Up to the last decade the method of excavation was 
simply digging a ditch, deepening it until a floor was 
reached, and widening the pit sideways to the walls. 
But since the Italian government approved the ideas of 
the archaeologist, Spinazzola, the digging has been done 
in horizontal layers and with extreme care. As objects 
are found they are photographed and their positions are 
noted so that when a house is restored its contents may be 
put back in place. Moreover, instead of seeing their 
finds carted off to the National Museum at Naples, the 
excavators are allowed to keep them at Pompeii. 

Some years ago it was thought that the homes of 
Pompeii were of only one story and had no windows along 
the streets. But Spinazzola’s methods have shown two- 
75 . 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

story buildings with overhanging balconies and front 
windows aplenty. One of the newly excavated houses 
has been reconstructed even to the ceilings of the upper 
floors. In the dining room a meal has been uncovered 
just as it was set on the table when the owner fled. A 
space in the floor shows that the food was sent up on a 
dumb waiter. Frescoes adorn the walls of all the houses 
unearthed, and the baths are amazingly luxurious. 

Two of the finest frescoes discovered in Pompeii adorn 
the doorway of a dyer’s shop. On one side the god 
Mercury is shown stepping out of a yellow marble temple, 
his robes blown back by his hurry. On the other side is 
Venus in a royal chariot drawn by four huge elephants. 
About her shoulders is a cloak of glorious blue, while on 
her head is a golden crown. The sign on another shop 
tells the provincial townsmen that the owner is a citizen 
of the imperial city. The fresco shows Romulus on one 
side of the door, and on the other /Eneas, who picked out 
the site of Rome, escaping from burning Troy with his 
aged father on his back and his little son by his side. 

Evidently Pompeii was in the midst of an election when 
the catastrophe occurred, for the walls are covered with 
the claims of rival candidates. '‘We beg you to elect 
G. Gavium Rufum a lawmaking duumvir,” says one. 
Others show that, while women did not have the vote, 
they evidently had political influence. “Zmyrina rec¬ 
ommends C. Julius Polybius for the post of lawmaking 
duumvir” is written on one wall. G. Gavium Rufum 
must have hated that sign. Zymrina and Asellina both 
commend C. Lollium for the post of duumvir charged 
with maintenance of roads and sacred and public buildings. 
Maybe it was Lollium who wrote the inscription scribbled 
76 


THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME 


on another wall: Farewell, Asellina, try to love me.” 
C. Cuspius, who aspired to the post of aedile, apparently 
felt the need of no lady friend's help. He toots his horn 
in front of his own house by declaring that:If glory must 
be given to those who live honestly, then to this young 
man must well-earned glory be given.” 

On the walls of the houses at crossroads were fixed big 
bells, which passing chariot drivers struck with their whips 
so as to warn those approaching from another direction. 
The crossroads were sacred places, for here sacrifices were 
offered the patron gods of the city. An altar unearthed 
at one such place bore the ashes of the last sacrifice to 
the pagan deities before the eruption of Vesuvius over¬ 
whelmed the city they were powerless to save. 


77 


CHAPTER X 


IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 


C ZECHOSLOVAKIA! 

The name sounds like Ultima Thule, and it 
, seems to indicate the jumping-off place of 
creation. ‘'Czecho'' might be a pet name for 
a monkey, and to many the word “Slovak’' is synony¬ 
mous with “Dago.” In the minds of millions of Amer¬ 
icans, the country has no identity, and I doubt if one man 
out of ten on the street can place it. Still, it contains 
five times as many people as Denmark, seven times as 
many as Norway, and ten or more times the number in 
Turkey. It is in the busiest and best part of Europe, and 
though still so young, has already taken its place in the 
finance, the business, and the politics of this side of the 
world. 

Most of the other republics that resulted from the 
Treaty of Versailles are largely farming propositions. 
Czechoslovakia is an industrial entity with factories 
ready to turn out goods, not only for the nation, but for 
the other peoples of Europe, for South America, and even 
for us. I came across the Atlantic with a representative 
of the biggest of the Chicago mail-order houses. He was 
on his way to Europe to buy stocks for his firm and one 
of the most important countries on his list was this. 
Czechoslovakia will sell him glassware and notions, laces 
and embroideries, linens and other textiles, necklaces, 

78 



Half the population of Naples seems to live in the narrow streets 
of the city. Here they cook, work, make love, and buy and sell with a 
total lack of embarrassment. 

















“Twentieth-century bandits carried me about in the blazing sun 
flooding the ruins of the wicked Pompeii of long ago. This picture was 
snapped in the Forum of the ancient city.” 



The finds at Pompeii are now kept there and some of the houses have 
been rebuilt. The excavations are made so carefully that even the 
places where there were roots of shrubs and trees are cleaned out. Thus 
similar plants can be restored to the gardens of eighteen centuries ago 











IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 


brooches, and many of the novelties that our women will 
skimp their house money to buy. 

Czechoslovakia is long and narrow and lies like a fat 
sausage in the great sandwich of Central Europe. It is 
between Germany and Poland on the north, and Austria, 
Hungary, and Rumania on the south. One end is in the 
Carpathian Mountains on the edge of Rumania, and the 
other is about six hundred miles away, right in the heart 
of industrial Germany. Turn it on the map of Europe, 
and it would reach from Milan to London; drop it down on 
the United States, and it would extend from New York to 
Detroit. From north to south its boundaries at the widest 
are not as far apart as New York and Baltimore, and in 
some places the country is not wider than the distance 
between Baltimore and Washington. Yet Czechoslovakia 
has an area almost seven times that of Massachusetts. 

This stretch of land is composed of three provinces, 
or states. At the west is Bohemia, a rich plain almost 
surrounded by mountains. It is peppered with factories 
and practically every inch of it is intensively cultivated. 
It is half the size of Ohio and has a population equal 
to that of Greater New York. In the east is Slovakia, 
nearly as large. Much of it lies in the high Carpathians, 
which have scenery as beautiful as that of Switzerland 
or the Austrian Tyrol. A land of farms, it is also exceed¬ 
ingly rich in natural resources. Its people number more 
than three times those of Detroit. Between these two 
states lies Moravia, which partakes somewhat of the char¬ 
acter of each of the others. It is as big as Massachusetts 
and its population approximates that of Chicago. 

From the standpoint of future development, Czecho¬ 
slovakia as a whole is one of the best lands of Europe. It 
79 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

has a fertile soil, and its farmers are proportionately greater 
in number than those of any other European country 
except France or Russia. Four fifths of the mines of the 
old empire of Austria-Hungary are within its borders. It 
has soft and hard coal, producing more than thirty million 
tons in a year, while it mines annually two million tons 
of iron ore, and its oil wells yield ten thousand tons of 
petroleum. It has gold, silver, copper, tin, opals, and 
garnets. In Bohemia is a radium mine, which, until the 
recent discoveries in the Belgian Congo, was one of the 
richest in the world. Its annual output is two grams, an 
amount which, I believe, may be somewhere near the size 
of a small pea. The land is one of the best wooded of 
Europe. Of every three acres one is covered with trees, 
and the annual timber cut amounts to more than enough 
to make a boardwalk an inch thick and five feet wide 
from Prague to the moon. 

The country has nearly fourteen million inhabitants, 
or about twice as many as Holland or Belgium, and one 
third as many as Italy or France. It has more than double 
the number of people left in Austria. The Czechs, the 
Moravians, and the Slovaks make up the bulk of the 
population. They belong to the same race as the Russians. 
Besides the ten million Slavs, there are something like 
three million Germans. Many of the German-speaking 
people are, however, of Slavic origin and are classed as 
Germans only because of their language and their associa¬ 
tions with Germany in the past. In time it is believed 
that all will be firmly welded together into one nation. 

Four out of every ten of the people of Czechoslovakia 
live on farms or in small villages, but there are several 
large cities and many small industrial centres. Prague, 
8o 


IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 


where I am writing, compares in population with Balti¬ 
more, St. Louis, or Boston. It is the capital and chief busi¬ 
ness centre. Brno (Brlinn), the industrial capital of 
Moravia, is about the size of Birmingham or Atlanta, and 
Bratislava on the Danube, the biggest town in Slovakia, 
has nearly one hundred thousand people. Plzen (Pilsen), 
Bohemia, where there is a big steel mill and where some of 
the best beer of Europe is made, is about the same size. 

Czechoslovakia is a land of rivers. The Danube forms 
part of its southern boundary, giving access to the Black 
Sea and the Mediterranean. Prague is situated on the 
Moldau, which flows into the Elbe and thence out to the 
ocean, so that the city has water communications all the 
way to the North Sea. The Elbe also cuts through 
Bohemia and it is now proposed to make a canal from it to 
the Danube, and one from the Oder to the Danube as 
well. The Elbe-Danube Canal has already been started, 
and will probably be completed within a decade. By a 
series of locks, it will cross the divide between the North 
and Black seas on the Bohemian-Moravian frontier at an 
altitude of one thousand feet. The Czechs have an outlet 
to the sea at Hamburg where they were given the use of 
certain wharves by the Versailles Treaty. They have also 
wharf rights at Stettin on the Baltic, at the mouth of the 
Oder, and wharves at Trieste at the head of the Adriatic, 
so that, although their republic is in the interior they 
have access to three of the important seaports of Europe. 

Every part of the Republic can be reached by railway. 
The stations are of stone, and the one in Prague named 
after President Wilson would be a credit to any American 
city. Train accommodations are as comfortable as in 
part of Europe. I travelled first class and with my 

8i 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

secretary had a compartment at less than half the cost 
of the same thing in Switzerland. We paid seven or eight 
cents a mile. The second-class fares are about three or 
four cents and the third about two cents. Although there 
was no dining car, there were plenty of chances to eat at 
the station buffets. 

On the train journey to Prague I had a good chance 
to see something of the industries of Bohemia. We rode 
four or five hours through a beehive of workshops. Every 
town had its factories of one kind or another and the coun¬ 
try was a crazy quilt of rich farms. The Bohemian basin 
is well watered, and its farms are better than those of any 
area of the same size in the United States. 

The farm buildings are substantial and larger and more 
costly than ours. I saw hundreds of huge barns of stone 
or brick covered with stucco, and roofed with red tiles. 
The houses of the owners are commodious and the farm¬ 
stead often consists of a dozen or so large buildings, some 
of which are given up to the labourers. All were well- 
painted and in excellent repair. 

At one station we stopped several hours, and I took a 
car and rode through the country. Every one I met 
seemed happy and enthusiastic, and all spoke proudly 
of the Republic. The people are still rejoicing in their 
freedom from Germany and Austria. 

The methods' of cultivation are old-fashioned, and 
women and cattle furnish a large part of the labour. The 
oxen draw the ploughs and carts, while the women hoe and 
weed and help in the harvesting. 1 saw several swinging 
scythes; they also draw carts, and some of them carry 
great cornucopia baskets slung to their backs and so 
heavily loaded as to bend them double. 

82 



The Old Town Bridge tower is the finest in Prague, “the city of a 
hundred towers.” It is at the entrance to the Charles Bridge, started four 
centuries ago by Charles IV, “the father of Bohemia.” 








In the Hradchin Palace lived the kings of Bohemia, who were crowned 
in St. Vitus’s Cathedral in the midst of the castle buildings. Now the 
President of Czechoslovakia and the government offices occupy some 
of its seven hundred rooms. 



Bohemia and Moravia hum with factories making sugar, glass, beer, 
metal ware, and other things. Bohemian glass and Pilsen beer are famous 
the world over, and the words “Made in Czechoslovakia” are growing 
more and more common on the goods we buy. 













IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 


The men and the women work in gangs in the fields. 
Often I saw one man bossing a gang of twenty women. I 
photographed some girls digging potatoes. They were 
clad in blue cotton with handkerchiefs wrapped round 
their heads and some of them were good-looking. They 
laughed as I snapped the camera. The oxen were fine 
burly animals, which pulled by their heads instead of their 
shoulders, as with us. A strap is fastened across the fore¬ 
head just under the horns and hitched to tugs on the 
plough. They draw loads in the same way in this region, 
but I am told yokes are used farther east. 

I like Prague. Although the white hair of the Middle 
Ages still hangs on its shoulders, it is full of enterprise 
and business. Its people seem prosperous and the stores 
are large and full of fine goods. The city has now in 
the neighbourhood of seven hundred thousand population, 
and is creeping out into the country. There is a necklace 
of smokestacks about the old town and many new factories 
are going up in the suburbs. 

The streets are wide and paved with Belgian blocks. 
The sidewalks in the chief business section are of black 
and white mosaic set in patterns, the stones being about 
an inch square. In front of my hotel there is a mosaic 
pavement at least twenty feet wide laid in the form of a 
checkerboard of black and white blocks. The arcades here 
remind me of those in Berne. They are twenty or thirty 
feet wide and walled with stores often fifty feet or more 
in height. 

There seem to be plenty of banks, and not a few of 
them have Czech-American clerks. I cashed my letter of 
credit to-day at a bank where the manager was from Pitts¬ 
burgh He tells me he can make more money here than 

83 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

in America, and that this is the belief of many of the 
Czechs who have returned from our country. The man¬ 
ager says he is introducing American methods and quick 
service, instead of making the depositors sit down and wait 
upon the leisure of the clerks like so many barber-shop 
customers. 

1 have been motoring to-day from one government 
building to another. It took us generations to build our 
Capitol and put up our other great government structures. 
Czechoslovakia had only to reach out her hands and take 
what she wanted, for the Austrians left her all of the build¬ 
ings she needed. The mighty castle erected by the kings 
of Bohemia on the great bluff overhanging the Moldau 
River is now a home for the President and also contains 
offices for the various departments. This castle is known 
as the Hradchin. It covers several hundred acres and is a 
veritable labyrinth of immense buildings surrounding 
courts with tunnel-like passages from one structure to 
another. It is antiquated and badly arranged for offices 
but it accommodates thousands of clerks and most of the 
government activities. 

In the centre of this maze is the famous Cathedral 
of St. Vitus, which was begun in 1344, almost six hundred 
years ago,'and a small portion of which is still uncompleted. 
The church is dedicated to St. Vitus, who is said to have 
come here from Rome about three hundred years after 
Christ to bring the people salvation. 

St. Vitus was not only an evangelist but a physician 
besides. He had also that faith which can move mountains, 
and charity as well. He performed many miracles, includ¬ 
ing the cure of nervous diseases. It is said that when the 
Emperor Diocletian called him in to cast a devil out of one 
84 


IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 


of the princes, St. Vitus restored the patient in mind and 
body. Then the Emperor urged the saint to give up Chris¬ 
tianity, but he refused. Upon being thrust into prison he 
was seen night after night dancing with the angels to 
celestial music, and from that time on he became the pa¬ 
tron of dancers, as well as of all those with nervous affec¬ 
tions. 

Later Diocletian sentenced St. Vitus to be put into a 
kettle of boiling lead, but he came out with no more hurt 
than was sustained by Shadrach, Meschach, and Abed- 
nego when they were bound in their hose, their tunics, and 
their mantles and thrown into the fiery furnace by Nebu¬ 
chadnezzar. The Bible says not a hair of these three 
saints was singed and the fire had no effect upon their 
bodies. It was the same with St. Vitus: the molten lead 
harmed not a bit of his flesh nor a thread of his garments. 
After that the saint came to Bohemia and did the work 
commemorated by the Prague Cathedral. He finally 
returned to Rome, where because of his religion he was, 
like Daniel, cast into a den of lions—but the animals 
licked his feet. 

Just one more story of the Cathedral. It relates to 
Sophia, the pious and beautiful daughter of an early king 
of Bohemia, whose hand was asked in marriage by a Ba¬ 
varian monarch. Sophia rejected him because he was a 
pagan and scoffed at Christianity. Her royal father, how¬ 
ever, insisted for political reasons on the marriage, where¬ 
upon she prayed to the Virgin to destroy her beauty so 
that she might not attract the passions of wicked men. 
When she awoke the next morning, she was cross-eyed and 
snub-nosed and her face was covered with whiskers. And 
such luxuriant whiskers! In the painting of the lady to 

85 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

be seen in one of the chapels of the Cathedral they are 
shown falling halfway to her waist and they reminded me 
of the ancient limerick: 

There was an Old Man with a beard, 

Who said: “It is just as I feared— 

Two Owls and a Hen, 

Four Larks and a Wren 

Have all built their nests in my beard/' 

The pagan lover took one look and abandoned his suit. 
Thereafter Sophia was plagued no more by proposals. 

Prague is full of stories like this. It has labyrinthine 
monasteries dating back to the Middle Ages and spires 
and domes that have pierced the heavens for seven hundred 
years. The best view of the city is from the top of a 
tower in the grounds of the great Schonborn Palace, which 
serves as the American legation. It is right under the 
Hradchin and in its seven rolling acres of beautiful gar¬ 
dens is a stone tower overlooking the Moldau and the 
surrounding country. It was built, I doubt not, before 
the United States existed. 

I climbed the hill and the stone stairs to the top of the 
tower. At my back was the enormous castle, as well 
as the palaces that have been bought by the British, 
French, and Japanese for their diplomatic headquarters, 
while in front, across the winding Moldau, lay the quaint, 
many-towered, red-roofed city of Prague. Below was 
the Charles Bridge, one of seven spanning the river. 
The bridge is decorated with twenty-eight stone and 
bronze images of saints, including one of St. John of 
Nepomuk, who vanquished devils and converted eight 
thousand Saracens and twenty-five hundred Jews to the 
86 



In Castle Krivoklat, not far from Prague, were imprisoned the Irish¬ 
man Kelly and the Englishman Dee when they failed to make gold for 
Rudolph II, the great patron of the i6th century alchemists. It was a 
favourite residence of Charles IV and the first of his four wives. 



The farm women work hard from sunrise to sunset, so that it is no 
wonder that more and more of the young girls are going to the cities and 
taking jobs in the factories with regular wages and short hours. 





There seem to be two or three women to every man at work in the 
fields. Though they do as much as or more than the men their wages 
of three cents an hour are lower than those paid to men. 



Outdoor Bohemia has all the charm of a landscape in New England 
or Virginia. It has also an air of comfort and prosperity, for this region, 
with Moravia, produces nearly one tenth of the world’s sugar beets. 









IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 


Christian faith. He is the patron saint of Bohemia. 
Near by is a marble slab marking the spot where he was 
thrown from the bridge into the river. As the body 
floated away, five miraculous stars appeared and hovered 
over it until it was brought to the shore. Good Catholics, 
as they pass over the bridge, put their hands on the slab 
and then kiss their fingers. 


87 


CHAPTER XI 


MOTORING THROUGH BOHEMIA 

T ake a seat with me in one of the automobiles of 
the State Department of Czechoslovakia for a ride 
across the fertile plains of Bohemia. It is a big 
seven-passenger touring car made in Prague and, 
although it has only four cylinders, it can easily make fifty 
miles an hour. Our Czech chauffeur wants to show that 
his Praga” is the equal of any automobile made in Amer¬ 
ica and, like Jehu, the son of Nimshi, he driveth furiously. 

We leave the Palace Hotel in the heart of the city, fly 
down a wide avenue, turn into the busy Graben, the street 
laid where once was the moat surrounding medieval 
Prague, and go past the huge Powder Tower. We cross 
Market Square with its bronze statue of John Huss, and 
drive over the River Moldau on one of its seven stone 
bridges. We pass oil mills, locomotive works, electric- 
lamp factories, and other industrial plants and soon find 
ourselves in the country. 

The straight road is macadamized, as smooth as a floor, 
and lined with fruit trees. On both sides and reaching 
away to the horizon are the vast plains where men and 
women are harvesting the fat crops. The fields have no 
fences; there are no haystacks or barns or other buildings 
on the landscape. The people live in villages of one-and- 
a-half-story houses and we run through a town at every 
few miles. 


88 


MOTORING THROUGH BOHEMIA 


But see, Jan is slowing the automobile! We are at 
the edge of a village and there is a great sign by the road¬ 
side warning us that we must slow down to six kilometers, 
or about four miles an hour. We are surrounded by geese. 
There are flocks of themevery where, each herded by a bare¬ 
legged girl who looks angrily after the car as we send them 
flying this way and that. The geese themselves are quite 
as independent as the citizens of this new republic, and 
they hiss in shrill protest as we crowd them to the side of 
the road. Geese are a characteristic feature of every bit 
of our journey. They are raised by the thousands in Bo¬ 
hemia and every farm and every house has its flock. They 
are so big that the portions of goose served in the restaur¬ 
ants look like chops and steaks. 

We make notes of the village as we go through. It is 
different from any town of the same size in America. The 
houses are of one-and-a-half stories, and their front walls 
are flush with the street. They are of yellow stucco with 
red-tiled, overhanging roofs. The doors and the windows 
are small and are painted pale green. The windows of the 
attics are hardly bigger than a sheet of note paper. In this 
town there are no sidewalks, and the gutter runs right 
along in front of the doorsteps. Other villages I have 
seen have somewhat better roadways, but none has any 
sidewalks to speak of. 

The gardens and the stables are back of the houses, with 
manure piles often lying between. The only flowers we see 
are those in the window boxes. The water supply is chiefly 
from wells or from the streams where women are kneeling 
and washing their clothes. In large towns, such as Pode- 
brady, for instance, the water comes from a fountain in the 
public square and the servant maids come and dip it out 
89 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

with basins into huge wooden buckets, which they take 
through the streets on their backs. I photographed a 
bobbed-haired, blue-eyed girl carrying five gallons or more 
at a load. 

In the centre of the village is the church. It has a 
great tower with a cross on the top and there is a clock 
set into the walls. I venture Bohemia has more town 
clocks than any other land in Central Europe. Almost 
every steeple has its cross and nearly every house has its 
shrine. There are also crosses out in the country where 
the people kneel and pray by the side of the road. The 
Bohemians have always been deeply religious, and until 
the end of the World War Roman Catholicism was the 
faith of the country. Since then a wave of Protestantism 
and agnosticism has swept over the land. A new National 
Church having features of both the Catholic and the Greek 
Orthodox sects has many adherents. 

Now we are again in the country. We pass heavy teams 
of draught horses hauling loads of two or three tons. The 
horses wear high collars trimmed with brass and ending 
in a leather horn that rises high over the withers. The 
wagons are like those of Russia and much like the boats 
in which we haul wood at home. They are high up on 
wheels and both single and double teams work with a 
tongue. When one horse is used he is hitched to one side 
of the tongue, and the singletree at the back holds the two 
tugs. There are many ox-carts and wagons drawn by 
white-faced cattle, and now and then a huge motor truck 
comes plugging along. I saw one ox-cart dragging an 
airplane on wheels. 

The lighter traffic is carried by human beings, usually by 
those of the weaker sex. There are women pushing wheel- 
90 


MOTORING THROUGH BOHEMIA 

barrows of bricks, hay, and grain; and women going along 
with great baskets of fruit or grass on their backs. I have 
yet to see in Czechoslovakia a job that is too heavy for the 
women. There seem to me to be four of them for every man 
in the fields. The women do as much as or more than the 
men but their wages of three cents an hour are less than 
those paid to men. There is a nominal eight-hour law for 
farm labour, but this is arranged so that it means so many 
thousand hours a year and the farmers and their helpers 
can divide it into such periods as they please. The result 
is that the regular farm hand is bound to put in more than 
eight hours in good weather so as to make up for the days 
of cold and rain. 

These farm women seem healthy and happy. The 
young ones are pretty, and with their red kerchiefs, their 
bright-coloured waists, their short skirts, and bare legs, 
they attract the eye. They are as straight as the rake 
handles they use in the hay fields and graceful withal. 
The older women are weatherworn, but their exercise keeps 
down their flesh. In fact, as an anti-fat treatment for our 
idle, candy-eating American women, I suggest the farm. 

Every square foot of land here is under cultivation, 
and the crops are larger on the average than ours. The 
wheat yield, for instance, is about twenty-seven bushels 
per acre and the oats yield thirty-six. The potato crop 
averages ninety bushels on each of the million and a half 
acres planted to tubers. The corn yield is smaller than 
ours, but in sugar beets the Czech farmers surpass us, 
raising more than nine thousand million pounds per an¬ 
num, or an average of nine tons per acre. In riding over 
the country I see no weeds, or any fences dividing the 
fields. 


91 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

The land is farmed scientifically. Every bit of manure 
is saved. Each of the farms 1 have visited, small and large, 
has a cistern under the stable, and the horses, the cattle, 
and the hogs stand on concrete floors draining into the 
cisterns, from which the liquid and washings are afterward 
pumped into tank wagons and spread over the fields. 

The farmsteads are interesting. Take, for instance, one 
at Opelany, a village of about seven hundred people, 
where I visited the home of my chauffeur’s brother. This 
holding of one hundred and fifty acres lay on the outskirts 
of the village and was cut through by a brook. Work was 
going on in the fields and the farmer had helping him a half- 
dozen women who put in twelve hours every day. My 
guide said that the property had been in the same family 
for more generations than he could number. 

There were two houses of white stucco, one occupied by 
my chauffeur’s mother and the other by his brother and his 
family. Adjoining each home, and practically under the 
same roof with it, were stables filled with cattle, pigs, 
horses, and goats. Each was floored with concrete and 
fitted with all arrangements for economical feeding. Be¬ 
tween the two houses was a large barnyard containing a 
storehouse for grain. Both houses were clean and the 
barnyards looked like tennis courts. 

We took coffee with Jan’s brother in a sort of kitchen 
and bedroom combined. There was a porcelain stove in 
the corner, above which 1 saw this sign in Czech: 

Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and the house is saved. 

The coffee was good and the cherry shortcake, seeds 
and all, tasted delicious. During my stay I took pictures 
of some of the farm girls, among them a sister and 
92 


MOTORING THROUGH BOHEMIA 


a cousin of the owner, who came from the village stream 
in which they had been wading while they washed the 
clothes. Both were good-looking, I can assure you. 

The next farm at which I stopped belonged to the presi¬ 
dent of the Agrarian Bank in Prague. This farm, situated 
about thirty miles from the capital, contains three or four 
hundred acres. Although it was a beautiful concrete 
structure of two stories and in all respects a most comfort¬ 
able home, the house faced the barnyard. Within a few 
feet of the home were two one-story barns, or stables, each 
two hundred feet long. All the buildings were roofed 
with tiles and all were of brick covered with stucco. I 
went through the stables with the owner and looked at 
the livestock, all of which is kept stabled, for here the 
grass is cut, chopped fine, and fed in the stalls. 

This farm was especially interesting because it had been 
bought by the banker as a result of the land reform follow¬ 
ing the independence of Czechoslovakia. Before the war a 
great part of the country was owned by several hundred 
aristocrats, heirs to large estates handed down from their 
ancestors who had taken part in putting down the Czech 
Revolution in 1620. It was in that year that the Czechs 
were defeated by the Austrians at the battle of the White 
Mountain and the Czechish nobility was practically wiped 
out. The common people were made serfs, and for a 
long time the Austrians, with the Hungarians and the 
Germans who came in to help fight the Czechs, had the 
best properties, while the original owners had practically 
no land at all. 

Some of the German and Austrian nobles had enormous 
estates. Prince Swartzenberg, for instance, had about six 
hundred thousand acres. Prince Lichtenstein had more 
93 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

than a quarter of a million, and others owned tracts almost 
as large. These properties were well administered. Their 
owners took the labour of the peasants, giving them small 
huts and plots of ground to work for themselves and 
paying them infinitesimal wages. I have heard that on 
the estate of a noble relative of a Hungarian Minister at 
Washington the average peasant received only thirty 
kronen, or six dollars, a year. 

When the new republic was formed. Parliament passed a 
law authorizing the government to buy these great estates 
and distribute them more equitably among the people. 
Some millions of acres will thus ultimately come into the 
hands of small farmers. 

On this trip through the country I visited some of the 
cooperative institutions to be found all over Bohemia. 
Some of these are made up of the farmers, some of labour¬ 
ing men, and some of consumers. They are closely allied 
to the political parties, each association having a party as 
its special defender. The consumers' cooperative societies 
have a membership of a hundred and twenty-seven thou¬ 
sand and are doing a business of more than one thousand 
million kronen. Czechoslovakia has more than ten thou¬ 
sand cooperative undertakings with above two million 
members. With their families, these people embrace 
more than half the population. The Czech societies now 
propose to combine with the cooperative societies of the 
Balkan states and the result may be a buying and selling 
organization of great strength. 


94 



“ 1 stopped for a moment at one of the wayside shrines common in 
Bohemia, where nearly all of the people are Catholics. One sees shrines, 
too, in the front walls of many of the farm houses.” 





At the annual meet of the Sokols in Prague twelve thousand men 
and as many women go through their drills with such perfect precision 
that one can scarcely believe that the various units have come from 
towns scattered throughout the country, and have had few mass rehearsals. 




CHAPTER XII 


A NATION OF ATHLETES 

S uppose the united states should have a great 
gymnastic awakening. Suppose the care of the 
I body should be the slogan not only of the men 
but of the women as well. Suppose there should 
spring up over night in every city and village and even 
out in the country, clubs of from fifty to five hundred, 
each member of which should engage in athletic training 
three nights a week, all through the year. Let the clubs 
include the grown-ups, and let the training begin with 
children of six years. Let the instruction be given by the 
best of physical directors, aided by all the first-class 
gymnasium appliances and, at the same time, let it be 
accompanied by the inculcation of ideals of clean living, 
high thinking, and patriotism, so that the soul grows with 
the body. What an effect all this would have upon the 
rank and file of our nation! 

Well, this is just what is going on and has been going 
on for a generation or so in Bohemia and Moravia. It has 
built up a people, which, now that it has regained its 
independence, is bound to be one of the strongest factors 
in the Europe of the future. 

The institution that is doing this is known as the Sokol. 
You have probably heard of the meets in the great stadium 
at Prague every summer where twelve thousand women 
and fifteen thousand men, delegates from the many athlet- 
95 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

ic societies of Czechoslovakia, go through their gymnastics 
like one vast machine to music composed for the occasion. 
You may have seen movies of the great army of girls, 
dressed in short dark skirts and white waists, tossing their 
twenty-four thousand bare arms to the sky, bending their 
backs toward the earth, swaying this way and that in 
rhythmic motion, or marching with their twenty-four 
thousand black-stockinged legs rising and falling as one in 
time with the strains of the band. You may have seen 
the fifteen thousand men, bare to the waist, going through 
their myriad evolutions. All this is wonderful as one of 
the great sport shows of the world, but after all it is only 
an exhibition. What I want you to see is the Sokol as it 
works every day throughout the Republic. 

The Sokols are no new things in Czechoslovakia. They 
date back to the time of our Civil War, when the awakened 
spirit of national independence was strong among the 
Bohemians, then suffering from the oppressions of the 
Austrian Hapsburg rulers. Within a few years after the 
formation of the first society in 1862 their number had 
increased until they were having a widespread influence. 
In 1866, when war broke out between Austria and Prussia, 
Doctor Tyrs, the leading spirit of the associations, planned 
a military organization, made rules for discipline and drill, 
and formed a corps of volunteers for home defence. The 
name '‘SokoE' means “falcon,'' and stands for the 
bravery and love of freedom of the eagle. In the Yugo- 
slavic songs of chivalry the word is applied to brave heroes. 
Throughout the years the Sokols helped keep alive the 
Czechs' desire for nationality and trained their bodies to 
fight for freedom when the time should be ripe. 

There are Sokols in every city, town, village, and dis- 
96 


A NATION OF ATHLETES 

trict of the state of Bohemia. They are to be found in 
every ward of the cities, and there are twenty-six in Prague. 
In the smaller societies, the men go through their exercises 
on three days of the week and the other three days the 
gymnasiums are left for the women. In some of the larger 
halls there are sufficient accommodations to permit the 
men and the women to exercise in different rooms at the 
same time. The section we shall visit has three hundred 
and sixty girl members of all ages from six to thirty-six or 
more. They are divided into classes, those under fourteen 
drilling from six to seven o’clock in the evening, those be¬ 
tween fourteen and eighteen from seven to eight, and the 
older ones from eight until nine. 

The whole big building is devoted to gymnasiums. 
Room after room is fitted up with horizontal and parallel 
bars, flying rings, leather horses, dumbbells, Indian clubs, 
and other gymnastic apparatus. 

We choose the hour between seven and eight o’clock and 
go to the hall without notice. Entering the lobby, we are 
introduced to a leader of one of the sections, a girl of 
eighteen, who has been a member of the Sokol since she 
was six. She is a beauty, and as straight as one of the poles 
used for vaulting the cross bar in the gymnasium. Though 
as plump as a partridge, she moves as gracefully as did 
Atalanta in her race for the apple of gold. Her face is 
fair, her hair is blonde, and her eyes are as blue as the 
Bohemian sky. Her bare arms and neck show no rolls of 
fat; she seems to be made of steel springs from head to 
heel. She wears black bloomers and stockings, with a 
short-sleeved blouse of white embroidered in red at the 
throat, along the shoulders, and down the front. 

After she has shown us through the building, we take a 

97 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

seat with her in the gallery, where we look down on more 
than one hundred girls. The young Amazons swing In¬ 
dian clubs and take setting-up exercises; they flash from 
the floor to the ceiling, grasping the flying rings in their 
hands; they run up the springboard and vault over tables 
four feet in width. Theirs is no dilettante play, either. 
It is hard work from start to finish and fat girls and lean 
girls, tall girls and short girls must all do the same. 

The exercises change every ten minutes, so that during 
the hour every muscle is brought into play. It is an inter¬ 
esting sight. Most of the girls are dressed like our guide 
but not a few are without their stockings and their rosy 
bare legs show from ankle to knee. 

After the close of this session, I saw one hundred of 
these same girls practise a drill with Indian clubs tipped 
with incandescent electric lights. The room was in dark¬ 
ness except for the tiny coloured lights that twinkled as 
the girls swung their clubs in time to the music. The 
effect was wonderfully charming. The girls were practising 
for a national exhibition a few months off. 

As I looked on, I thought of the similar drills going 
on at this same hour all over the Republic and I could not 
help but think of the effect on the nation. The girls of 
this Sokol come from every class of society. Some are de¬ 
partment-store clerks, some stenographers and typists, and 
some have their own cars and belong to the idle rich. But 
the atmosphere is one of perfect democracy, and the best 
of good feeling seems to prevail. 

And just here I want to say a word about the women of 
Czechoslovakia as I have observed them on this flying trip 
through the country. They are beautiful and womanly 
and withal free from some of the weaknesses of the girls of 
98 



In Ruthenia, the extreme eastern part of Czechoslovakia, most of 
the people observe the forms of the Greek Orthodox Church, though 
they hold allegiance to the Pope at Rome. This province is autonomous 
and has a former Pittsburgh lawyer as its governor. 





Even in a good-sized Bohemian town the water must be brought from 
the public square. But this is no hardship to the girls, for the pump 
is a meeting place for the young people of the village. 




A NATION OF ATHLETES 


our American cities. There is practically no use of the lip 
stick, the powder puff, or the rouge pot. Prague is almost 
as big as Boston and almost half again as large as Washing¬ 
ton. Nevertheless, in one afternoon’s stroll, you will see 
more powder and paint on Washington Street, that ancient 
cow-path of Boston, or on F Street in our national capital, 
than you could collect if you scraped the faces of the 
Prague girls from one year’s end to the other. 

According to the new constitution of Czechoslovakia, 
both women and men have the right to vote and to sit in 
the Parliament. There are eleven women members in the 
House and two in the Senate, but I am told that the small 
representation in the latter body is due to the fact that to 
be elected to the Senate one must be forty-five years old, 
and but few of the women wish to acknowledge that they 
have reached that age. 

As to voting here, there is no need of a literacy test. 
As far as Bohemia and Moravia are concerned, every one 
can read and write, and the standard of education is above 
that of almost any other country of the world. Czecho¬ 
slovakia has about two-million pupils in the schools. It 
has more than fifteen thousand schools, primary, second¬ 
ary, high schools, and universities, schools for women, 
and schools for men. There are twenty-three thousand 
students in the two universities at Prague alone, and there 
are universities at Brno and elsewhere. Slovakia is 
much more backward than the rest of the country, but 
since the organization of the government three thousand 
new schools have been established there, including many 
for adults, and everything is being done to bring its educa¬ 
tional standing up to that of the rest of the Republic. 

The boys and the girls feel their responsibility as mem- 
99 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

bers of the new nation. They know they will have an 
equal chance from now on and may, like our American 
youth, hope to be president some day. They have before 
them the example of the great heroes of the revolution. 
Dr. Edward Benes, first premier of Czechoslovakia, left 
the farm at the age of twelve and worked his way through 
the university and into international fame before he was 
thirty-five. President Masaryk was born poor and as a 
boy was apprenticed to a blacksmith. Nevertheless, he 
became one of the great scholars and leaders of Central 
Europe and is now revered as the George Washington 
of his country. 

Prague is one of the oldest university cities of Europe, 
and since the World War it has become the great centre of 
education for the Slavs. As soon as the new Republic 
was established, the young people came in such hordes 
that they could not be accommodated. They slept in the 
parks, at the railway stations, and on the tables of the 
coffee houses. The city turned over its gymnasiums and 
university halls to them, using some of the furniture left 
by the Red Cross. But more and more came until the 
people of Prague were in despair. 

Then it was decided that the students should build 
houses for themselves. The city contributed the site and 
the national government pledged four million kronen to 
start the work. Doctor Masaryk gave a million and 
a half kronen from the fund presented to him by the nation 
on his seventieth birthday, and his daughter, Alice 
Masaryk, and others helped swell the contributions. 

On the day set to begin building the colony eight hun¬ 
dred men and women students reported for work, and 
more than fifteen hundred finally took a hand. The girls 
100 


A NATION OF ATHLETES 


established a kitchen to feed the boys, and within a short 
time there was a big gang of university men doing things 
they would once have thought beneath their dignity. They 
dug the foundations and did all the rough labour of carting 
and carrying. Every man who worked four hours got his 
meals free and when the dormitories were opened no one 
was given a room in the colony unless he had worked three 
hundred hours or would agree to devote that much time to 
the development of the institution. 

It was such a novelty to see the intellectuals doing 
manual labour, that thousands came to watch them at 
work. The students made the spectators pay fees and 
sold stones and bricks as souvenirs, realizing fifty thousand 
kronen the first day. All this work was directed by skilled 
overseers and mechanics and the result is a group of houses 
that is now accommodating about seven hundred students. 

Since my visit to the colony I have gone through the 
Students’ Home, an institution established by our 
Y. M. C. A. and the Ohio State University. The home is 
a sort of clubhouse and cafeteria where meals are furnished 
to students practically at cost. It is patronized by some¬ 
thing like six thousand boys and girls and it is now 
serving several thousand lunches and about fifteen hun¬ 
dred dinners every day. The lunch costs about eleven 
cents, and the dinner costs a cent or so less. The meals 
are almost the same, each consisting of meat, bread, 
vegetables, and coffee, but the luncheons are the more 
popular, for most of the students can afford but one full 
meal a day, in addition to the coffee and rolls they have for 
breakfast and supper. This is not hardship for most of 
them, since they would not fare better at home. 

The students who frequent this institution belong to 
lOI 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

twenty-three different nationalities. There are, of course, 
Czechs, Moravians, and Slovaks, but there are also Ukrain¬ 
ians, Ruthenians, Yugoslavs, Bulgarians, Russians, and a 
great many Jews. The home has an auditorium for lectures 
and a social hall. It has reading rooms where the boys 
come to study, for many of them cannot afford light or heat 
in their own quarters. 

The club is governed by a council, one delegate being 
elected for each two hundred students in such a way that 
every nationality and faction is represented. As a rule 
the different nationalities get along well together. Up to 
the present the only quarrel that has occurred was one be¬ 
tween the Magyars and Slovaks. The Magyars had sung 
in public a song that the Slovaks declared immoral. The 
students' court settled the question in favour of the Mag¬ 
yars, who showed that the Slovaks had not rightly inter¬ 
preted the ditty. 

Both women and men use the home and come together in 
the social hall. The head of the woman student body is a 
tall, fine-looking Czech, a young graduate of Vassar. I 
asked her how she liked that college. She replied: 

I just love Vassar, and the best I could wish for any 
Czech girl is that she might go there to study." 


102 



Bratislava was once the capital of Hungary, and here the Hapsburg 
kings were crowned. The Austrians called it Pressburg and its Hungarian 
name was Poszony, but now it is the capital of Slovakia and named for 
an early Czech king. 



The costumes of the Slovak boy and girl are as much a part of their 
Sundays and feast days as going to the village church. Although Bohernia is 
less orthodox than it used to be, the people of Slovakia are deeply religious. 


4 















Often in Slovakia the Protestant girls of a community wear a costume 
entirely different from that of the Catholics. The native garb for Easter 
is quite different from that for Christmas, and the people of each village 
have their distinctive dress. 







CHAPTER XI11 


FROM PRAGUE TO VIENNA 

I HAVE come from the capital of Czechoslovakia to 
the capital of the Austrian Republic. From one of 
the newly christened national capitals of Europe to 
one that was gray-haired and wrinkled when our 
own city of Washington was laid out along the Potomac. 
The first was a city when William the Conqueror landed 
in England, and the second was a centre of trade when 
the Crusaders floated down the Danube on their way 
to rescue Jerusalem. 

It was only one hundred and eighty years after Christ 
that my old friend, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, died in 
the Roman fortress on the site of Vienna, leaving ^‘The 
Meditations” we all love to read; and here Charlemagne 
built a stronghold after he had driven out the Asiatic 
tribes that had set up an empire on the Danube. It was in 
the eighth century that he established the Margravate of 
Austria, which later on succumbed to the Hungarians. 
During the Crusades Vienna began to build up its trade 
with the East, and from that time to this it has been the 
chief mart of the Danube, that great water highway be¬ 
tween Europe and Asia. 

On my way to Vienna I came through some of the lands 
that Austria lost by the treaty of St. Germain, which the 
Allied Powers drew up for her signature. I crossed Bo¬ 
hemia, Moravia, and Slovakia, via the Danube. The 
103 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

city is so much the child of that mighty river that I did 
not want to reach it by railway; so 1 took a train at Prague 
and rode for the better part of a day to Bratislava, the 
capital of Slovakia. There 1 boarded an Austrian steamer 
and came upstream, fighting the current, to where 1 am 
now. 

Along the way I was surprised at the natural wealth 1 
saw in Moravia. The province is bigger than Massa¬ 
chusetts and has as many people as Baltimore and Phila¬ 
delphia combined. Much of it is beautifully rolling and 
the hills are covered with forests. We passed numer¬ 
ous sawmills, and at the stations found lumber stacked 
up for shipment. There were mountains of pulp wood 
ready for the market, and truckloads of telegraph and 
telephone poles going out of the country. The forests 
seemed to be well cared for and 1 saw no underbrush 
anywhere. 

Earther south the soil was richer. On both sides of the 
railroad fields of wheat, oats, and grass waved to and 
fro under the wind, and 1 could see nothing but crops 
reaching on to the horizon. The scenes reminded me of 
the words of the Psalmist: 

The valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, 
they also sing. 

Here all the trees that line every road, ditch, and creek 
are fruit bearing. 

The Moravian villages looked prosperous and the farm¬ 
ers must be rich. Most of the houses were roofed with 
slate, and their stuccoed walls had been recently white¬ 
washed. There were industrial centres and towns at every 
few miles. I spent some time at Brno, the capital, which 
104 


FROM PRAGUE TO VIENNA 


has more than two hundred thousand inhabitants and is a 
manufacturing town in the heart of a farming region. It is 
noted for its textiles and used to be called the Manchester 
of Austria.” 

Brno was once known as Briinn, and its re-christening 
indicates the new status of things in this part of Europe. 
As soon as the Czechs won their nationality they proceeded 
to sow place names in their own language over the new na¬ 
tion. Pilsen, still famous for its beer, has become Plzen; 
Pressburg is now Bratislava, after one of the early rulers of 
Bohemia ;Marienbad onecan scarcely recognize as Marian- 
sky Lazne; while it would seem that Carlsbad would never 
be so popular as a health resort with such a tongue-twisting 
designation as Karlovy Vary. 

In Slovakia one does not notice so much enthusiasm 
for the Czechs as in Moravia and Bohemia. The Slovaks 
are another branch of the Slavic people, not nearly so 
progressive as the Czechs, whom they call ‘The Prussians 
of the Slavs.” The people of Prague, on the other hand, 
seem to regard their more backward countrymen much 
as the New Yorker does the citizens of Arizona and 
New Mexico. To them Slovakia is a kind of “wild and 
woolly East.” The Slovaks explain their high percent¬ 
age of 'illiteracy by saying that rather than learn to read 
and write the Magyar tongue, which the Hungarians 
tried to force upon them, they went without learning 
at all. The Slovaks and the Czechs use a closely allied 
speech, so that it is easy for them to understand each 
other. 

Slovakia is a mountainous and thinly populated region 
with fertile valleys separated by ridges sloping toward the 
Danube. 1 found it a land of small farms, forests, and 
105 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

villages rather than one of cities, mills, and shops. I 
noticed that the women worked hard and saw a number of 
them bent double under great loads of long poles, which 
were strapped to their backs. I was struck with the hon¬ 
est faces of the people. Indeed, I have been told that the 
Slovak peasant’s honesty is proverbial and that his home 
bank will lend him money, even to go to America to seek 
his fortune. The money-lenders know that either he or 
his family will surely pay the debt. 

I spent the night in Bratislava, at a good hotel, where 
my room cost me a dollar and a quarter, and before taking 
my steamer next morning I drove through the cobble¬ 
stone streets in a one-horse carriage. Bratislava was once 
the capital of Hungary and it was here that the Hapsburgs 
were crowned kings. On the tower of the old Coronation 
Church, which dates back to the thirteenth century, there 
is still a gilded Hungarian royal crown. The town was 
known as Pressburg to the Austrians and Pozsony to the 
Hungarians. Its population numbers one hundred thou¬ 
sand, mostly Slovaks and Hungarians. 

The steamer that brought us from Bratislava up to 
Vienna was one of four boats plying between Ruschuk, 
Bulgaria, past Belgrade to the Austrian capital. The 
steamship company was originally known as the Monarch 
Line and when they were planned the four boats were to be 
named after great rulers of the time: Kaiser Wilhelm, 
Francis Joseph, Ferdinand of Bulgaria, and Mohammed V., 
Sultan of Turkey. The two boats built during the World 
War were named respectively Frani Josef and Wilhelm, 
but after the treaty of peace it was decided to throw 
down the monarchs and put up the planets, as stars 
that could not be affected by the wars of the future. 
io6 


FROM PRAGUE TO VIENNA 


JVilhelm and Fran^ Josef became Jupiter and Saturn, 
and the two boats that were added later were christened 
Neptune and Helios. I came up on Helios, which was 
about the only sun we had for much of the way. It 
rained now and then, but just as we crossed the boundary 
of Austria and Czechoslovakia, a mighty rainbow appeared 
spanning the river that separates the two countries. One 
end of the bow rested in Czechoslovakia and the other in 
Austria, and the glorious arch of splendid hues seemed like 
the bow in the clouds God set up for Noah, the token of a 
covenant that no more should the deluge of war descend 
upon the nations so bound together. 

And yet I fear that the peace of the present is one 
of armed truce rather than of brotherly love, for as I went 
on toward Vienna, I frequently saw evidence of hatred 
on the part of the Czechs and the Slovaks for their former 
masters. On my way to the boat in Bratislava I passed a 
great pedestal without a statue and was told that there 
formerly stood the fine bronze figure of the old Hapsburg 
Empress, Maria Theresa. 

Some twenty-odd miles west of Bratislava the March 
River flows into the Danube beneath the shadow of a 
towering rock. This is one of the ‘'Great Divides” of 
human history. Southeast are the plains of Hungary; 
southwest, across the Danube, is Austria; northwest 
stretch the forests and hills of Bohemia; northeast lie the 
little valleys of Slovakia. All four of the racial streams 
represented in these different regions—Czechs, Germans, 
Slovaks, and Magyars—were formerly subjects of the 
Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1896 the Hungarians 
raised on the rock a beautiful shaft to commemorate the 
thousand years that the Magyars had held here an outpost 
107 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

of western civilization. Now the column lies in ruins, 
shattered doubtless by some Slovak with hatred of his 
ancient masters in his heart. Such acts of vandalism 
keep antagonisms alive and breed more bitterness in the 
vanquished. 


io8 


CHAPTER XIV 


VIENNA 

J OIN me this morning as I step out of the old palace 
that has been changed into the hotel where I am 
staying, and go with me on a trip about Vienna. 
Let us begin our tour at St. Stephen’s Place, 
which for centuries has been the heart of this old city. 
There were houses upon this plaza in the days of the 
Romans. The beautiful south tower, which sends its 
slender Gothic spire soaring four hundred and fifty feet 
up into the sky, was completed not long after Joan of 
Arc was burned at the stake. 

But what is that crowd on the corner of the square? 
They are gazing at the cathedral spire, a gigantic stone 
finger pointing toward heaven. We take our glass and 
look up. Some daring man is trying to climb the great 
structure. He seems little bigger than a fly away up 
there in the blue. 

There are steps inside the tower by which we may reach 
its pinnacle. We enter and walk round and round 
through the darkness, and the climb grows harder as we 
ascend the five hundred and thirty-three steps to the top. 
On the way we pass a great bell that weighs twenty tons. 
Its story goes back to 1683 when the Turks were laying 
siege to the city and seemed likely to take this stronghold 
of Christendom. From this very tower the anxious watch¬ 
ers looked on at the battle outside the old walls until at last 
109 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

they saw the tide turnedagainst the Moslems by the arrival 
of the troops of John Sobieski, afterwards King of Poland. 
From the cannon captured from the Turks was made this 
huge bell, which was christened ‘‘Josephine'’ in honour of 
Joseph I, in whose reign it was cast. It was rung for the 
first time on the occasion of the coronation of Charles VI, 
the father of Maria Theresa. The last time its pene¬ 
trating tones reverberated over the city was when it was 
tolled in 1898 at the death of Elizabeth, the murdered 
Empress of Erancis Joseph. Notwithstanding the fact 
that the top of the tower was restored at the time of our 
Civil War, the vibrations of the great bell shake the spire 
so much that it is now considered unsafe to ring it. 

Standing on the top of the tower, we look to the four 
points of the compass. That stream at the right, with 
its long string of barges, is the mighty Danube, the second 
river in Europe. Rising in the Black Eorest of Germany, 
it winds its way past Vienna and Budapest, and on down 
through Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Rumania 
to the Black Sea. It is a thousand miles longer than the 
Rhine and is navigable all the way from Germany until it 
flows out into that mighty body of water which washes a 
large part of South Russia and gives access through the Bos¬ 
porus to the Mediterranean and thence to the Atlantic. 

The Danube is one of the great water highways of 
Europe and I may say of the world. It is already connected 
by canal with the Rhine, and projects are under way that 
will link it with the Elbe and the Oder, so that freight 
from the North Sea and the Baltic will one day join the 
traffic on its waters. 

Now turn around and look to the west. With the glass 
you can see the Alps, but you cannot distinguish the 
110 



“From the south tower of St. Stephen’s we look out over the city. Our 
eyes fall upon the Hapsburg coat of arms embedded in the Cathedral roof 
and a constant reminder of the dynasty that has been banished.” 







Karl’s Platz gets its name from Karl’s Church, which was begun in 1715 
by the Emperor Charles VI as a thank offering for the end of the terrible 
plague that had scourged Vienna. To the right is theTechnical High School. 



Placing their hopes for the Austria of to-morrow on the children 
of to-day, the Austrians are making many reforms in the public schools 
and adapting them to the new order of things. 









VIENNA 


passes that put Vienna on the great trade route from Italy 
along which much of the Mediterranean commerce goes 
northward. There are other passes through the Carpa¬ 
thians on the north. Vienna is in the basin where many 
lines of traffic come together. There is a down grade from 
the chief industrial centres of Europe all the way to 
Vienna; and it is down grade from Vienna to the Black Sea. 
The railways follow the easy grades, many of them having 
been built on the Roman roads that converged at thispoint. 

It is its geographic location that makes Vienna a great 
city. As one of the government officials said to me 
yesterday, “You cannot move a city like this any more 
than you can change the stars in their orbits. The 
Powers that drew up the Treaty of St. Germain could do 
much to weaken Austria, but they could not lift this 
city out of its place here on the Danube at the crossroads 
of the north and the south. Its geographical location 
made the Vienna of centuries past, and will make it the 
great meeting place of the bankers and traders of the 
future. We hold the strategic economic position of this 
part of the world, and will continue to do so until the Lord 
changes the geography of Europe.’' 

But let us turn our minds and our eyes from visions 
of the future of Vienna and observe the city at our feet. 
From our vantage point we can see a unique feature 
of its plan. In the days of Maria Theresa and until long 
after the time when Napoleon occupied Vienna, St. Ste¬ 
phen’s Place was the centre of a town enclosed by walls 
and a moat dating back to the thirteenth century. At in¬ 
tervals there were bridges and stone gateways through 
which one got glimpses of the fields and the suburbs out¬ 
side, but the people inside generally had their exercise 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

on the top of the walls themselves. These were more than 
two hundred feet wide and took the place of parks and pub¬ 
lic gardens, for which there was no space in the crowded 
city. 

Finally, when the congestion grew too great, someone 
conceived the idea of throwing down the walls, tumbling 
them into the moat, and making a circular street where 
once had been the medieval ramparts. This is the Ring- 
strasse, one of the great thoroughfares of the world. It 
is two miles long and twenty-seven feet wider than Penn¬ 
sylvania Avenue in Washington. Double rows of great 
tree's run throughout its length, and there are three road¬ 
ways for traffic. The wide flagged sidewalks are lined 
with magnificent four- and five-story buildings. 

Suppose we go down from the tower, hire a cab, and 
take a trot around the Ring to see better what it is like. 

Upon and within the circle are many huge buildings, 
every one of which has its history and many of which hold 
treasures of literature, science, art, and music. Here 
is the Hofburg, long the palace of the Hapsburgs, and 
here the Parliament Building, in which democracy has at 
last gained the upper hand over the proudest aristocracy 
of Europe. Among the finest structures are the Technical 
High School and the twin Museums of Art and Natural 
History. The two museums are separated by the Maria 
Theresa Place in which is an imposing statue of Maria 
Theresa sitting enthroned on a granite pedestal. She 
holds the sceptre she wielded so competently during the 
forty years of her reign and the document of the Pragmatic 
Sanction, whereby her father, Charles VI, set aside custom 
and decreed that his only child, although a woman, should 
succeed him. 


2 


VIENNA 


On the Ring is the great University of Vienna, which 
has some eight thousand students. It has had more than 
five and a half centuries of continuous existence and, 
next to the University of Prague, is the oldest German 
university. 

Not far from the University is the Town Hall, which 
cost more than seven million dollars and which is, except 
for St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the most imposing edifice in 
Vienna. Besides containing the offices of the Mayor and 
the other city officials, it houses the Historical Museum 
and a famous collection of arms and armour. One of the 
trophies preserved here under glass is the skull of the 
Turkish general Kara Mustafa, who led the attack on 
Vienna in 1683. Near it are his shirt and the silken cord 
sent him by the Sultan upon the news of the Moslem 
defeat. When, taking the hint, the officer had strangled 
himself with the cord, the skin was stripped from his face 
and sent to Constantinople to prove that he was really 
dead. Later on, when Belgrade was taken from the 
Turks, his body was found in a mosque, and a Catholic 
dignitary sent these relics to the Vienna museum. 

On the Ring, too, is the great Imperial Opera House. 
It seems to me the Viennese are more proud of their 
musical attractions than of anything else. The whole 
city breathes music. Every night you can hear in almost 
any important street a concert or opera that would be 
a star performance in any large city of the United States. 
There are band concerts in the parks, and practically all 
the hotels have excellent music at dinner. There are a 
half-dozen opera houses, and no end of small theatres 
where music is the chief feature. 

The two big opera houses here are famous the world 

113 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

over. The Imperial Opera, which is partly supported by 
the government, has as its conductor Richard Strauss; and 
the People’s Opera is conducted by Felix von Weingartner, 
who only a few years ago deserted Berlin for Vienna. Rich¬ 
ard Strauss does not come of the famous Strauss family, 
headed by Johann Strauss, a native of Vienna, to whose 
music all the world waltzes. It was Johann who was 
known as the Dance King and it was he who wrote 
'‘The Blue Danube.” Richard Strauss is a native of 
Munich, but his greatest works were composed in Vienna. 
This city was also the home of Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, 
and Brahms. It was here that Mozart composed “Figaro,” 
“The Magic Flute,” “Don Juan,” and “The Requiem,” 
and here Beethoven lived for thirty-five years. Brahms, 
although born in Hamburg, said that Vienna was an ideal 
place for the composition of symphonies. Here to-day 
lives Franz Lehar in the house where “The Merry Widow” 
was written, and here modern light music may be said to 
have originated and to have had its development. In the 
darkest hours of Vienna’s poverty and starvation after the 
war, concerts were held right along, and people went hungry 
so as to hear Jeritza, Slezak, Lehmann, and other favourites 
in grand opera. 

I have seen hundreds of school children with their 
books in packs on their backs. They are fat and healthy 
and look no different from similar children in an American 
city. The people on the streets are fairly well dressed, 
and the crowds one sees in the Prater or at Schonbrunn on 
Sunday are apparently as prosperous as those in the parks 
of Paris or Brussels. Vienna had a terrible time and un¬ 
doubtedly lost some of her population by starvation, but 
once her currency was stabilized, even though it took seven 
114 


VIENNA 


hundred kronen, formerly worth one hundred and forty 
dollars, to equal one cent, the people recovered their cour¬ 
age and spirit and went about their business as usual. 
The stores are filled with fine goods and are doing a good 
business. Most of the industries are busy, the bank 
deposits are piling up, and the bankers are lending money 
to finance new undertakings. The cafes and beer halls 
are crowded. 

The Viennese seem to me almost to live in their cafes, 
of which there must be thousands. Theirs is a city of big 
apartment buildings rather than detached houses and the 
citizens appear to use the coffee houses and wine shops 
as their second homes. 

Coffee was introduced into Europe by traders with the 
East. London had its first coffee shop in 1652 and Mar¬ 
seilles soon followed suit, but it was not until after the siege 
of Vienna by the Turks that the beverage became known 
in this city. Among the spoils left behind in the hasty 
retreat of Kara Mustafa’s army were several bags of hard 
greenish grain. These were given to a young Polish 
shopkeeper of Vienna, who had heard of how the grain 
might be roasted and steeped in hot water to make a 
delicious drink. He brewed some of the stuff and then 
went from house to house carrying cups of it on a tray. 
Finally, when his coffee had grown popular enough, he 
opened “The Sign of the Blue Bottle,” which soon became 
one of the most frequented resorts in the city. At one end 
of the room was a huge fireplace in which were great copper 
kettles filled with boiling water. There were wooden 
benches along the wall, but no tables, so that the customers 
had to set their cups beside them. Swinging lamps 
lighted the place and shone upon some of the most dis- 

115 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

tinguished men of the Vienna of that day, who were among 
the regular patrons. After the Pole's death, other coffee 
houses sprang up and to-day everyone goes to the cafes, 
many of which have tables out on the sidewalks in summer. 
By four o'clock in the afternoon it is difficult to find a seat, 
for all Vienna is drinking coffee. 

The Viennese cafe is a reading room and a club as well 
as a restaurant. The minute one enters a waiter rec¬ 
ognizes his nationality and brings him a paper—the 
London Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Berlin Tageblatt, 
or whatever the stranger's appearance and accent seem 
to call for. As one sits reading, sipping his coffee, and 
eating his good Vienna roll, he is surrounded by crowds 
of men and women talking animatedly of business, pleas¬ 
ure, and politics. No one is in a hurry and time itself 
seems to have stopped for this hour of social relaxation. 


i6 


CHAPTER XV 


AUSTRIA, THE REPUBLIC 


W HEN the World War ended, Austria found 
herself in a desperate condition. The 
peace treaties had stripped her of the bulk 
of her territory and the nation felt that it 
had not enough left to make life worth living. Its money 
became unstable; it rose and fell over night. The merchant 
dared not buy, fearing that he could not get back the cost 
of his goods when he sold them. The banker saw the value 
of his loans shrinking. The labourer could not tell what 
his wages would be worth when he got them, and the house¬ 
wife could not calculate her expenses. The national credit 
was wiped out and disintegration and complete ruin 
seemed certain. 

In this situation Austria’s statesmen consulted with her 
neighbours, Italy and Czechoslovakia, and with other 
powers. It was decided, as a forlorn hope in a desperate 
case, to appeal to the League of Nations for help. In the 
Palace of Nations at Geneva, the financial, commercial, 
and technical experts drew up a plan for an international 
loan. Austria agreed to it and the Parliament at Vienna 
passed measures engaging that the scheme should be 
carried out in every particular. Then the League sent a 
representative here to control all matters relating to the 
loan and to act as a sort of trustee for the nation, and the 
task of rebuilding Austria was begun. 

117 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

To make you understand the size of the job I shall have 
to compare Austria with the United States. We will sup¬ 
pose that our country has gone through a great war and 
the government and people are bankrupt. We are desper¬ 
ate and we ask some outsiders to suggest a plan of salva¬ 
tion. They look into our affairs, and tell us, for one thing, 
that we have too many government officials and that one 
out of every three must be discharged. Where a post- 
office has three clerks, it must get on with two, and where 
there are thirty men on a government job, ten must be 
released. With only six million people, Austria had at 
Vienna as many state employees as when her population 
numbered fifty million. There were three hundred 
thousand civil servants, of whom it was agreed one hun¬ 
dred thousand must go within two years. Think what a 
fuss it would make in the United States if one out of every 
three of our government workers were dismissed. 

Moreover, suppose our Congress should be forced to cut 
its appropriations about forty per cent. It will spend over 
three thousand millions this year, but suppose it were told 
that for every dollar formerly expended it might now 
have only sixty cents. 

You remember how our people objected to the proposal 
of a tax of one per cent, on all sales. The League demanded 
that such a tax be collected and the Austrians are now 
paying it. For every dollar’s worth of goods bought, one 
cent goes to the government, and for every ten dollars 
spent, ten cents drops into the treasury. This sales tax 
yields a big revenue. 

The government was required to reorganize the rail¬ 
roads and other public services. It stopped printing 
money and created a national bank which can issue notes 

ii8 



The rich, the poor, and the great unwashed have the freedom of 
Schonbrunn Palace and its beautiful grounds of 500 acres. Formerly 
the summer residence of royalty, it is now a great popular resort. 










In the mountainous district of Carinthia republican Austria has 
valuable assets in the form of pine forests, and mines that yield lead, iron, 
zinc, and coal. The ancient Hochosterwitz Castle, rebuilt in 1600, stands 
near Launsdorf as a symbol of the passing aristocratic order. 



Located on the Danube and other natural arteries of trade, Vienna 
stands at the crossroads of Europe. For this reason the Austrians believe 
their capital will always be an important commercial centre. 





AUSTRIA, THE REPUBLIC 

only when there is gold collateral to support them. The 
stock for that bank, amounting to about six million dollars, 
was subscribed as soon as it was issued, and the institution 
soon had double the reserve required by the law. 

And what has this cost the nations that underwrote 
the plan? So far, not one cent. They have lent only 
their credit by guaranteeing that Austria will pay back 
what she borrowed. The new debt is secured by the 
customs duties and tobacco monopoly, which have brought 
enough every year to meet the interest and cut down the 
principal. The loan was in the neighbourhood of two 
hundred million dollars. Eighty per cent, of it was guaran¬ 
teed by Great Britain, France, Italy, and Czechoslovakia, 
and the rest by outsiders. It was over-subscribed, for 
people believed that it would surely be paid. 

The character of the Austrians was a factor in the suc¬ 
cess of this loan, for these people are known all over 
Europe as thrifty, hardworking, and peaceful. Doctor 
Griinberger, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, tells me 
there is no danger of social revolution. He says that, 
even though the people were starving when the Bolsheviks 
came up the Danube within two hours of Vienna and 
down from Bavaria to within a like distance of the Austrian 
border, and when the radicals were pushing their propa¬ 
ganda in from Poland and Russia, there was no inclination 
here to join with them. The Austrians of to-day speak 
German and have a large amount of German blood, but 
they have intermarried with their neighbours and are like 
the Bavarians rather than the Prussians. They are a happy, 
easily contented, and intelligent people, with a marked 
ability to invent and contrive. Moreover, they are conserv¬ 
ative and believe in business-like method^, as is evidenced 
119 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

by the reputation of Vienna’s banking community, which is 
famous everywhere for shrewd and skilful finance. 

When Austria came to reexamine her assets after the 
crisis was passed, she found them by no means so poor as 
had been supposed. The old Austro-Hungarian Empire 
had a greater area than any country in Europe except Rus¬ 
sia, and nearly half as many people as the United States 
has now. The Republic is just about one eighth the 
size of the old empire and less than one third as big as the 
former Austria alone. To-day Austria has thirty-two 
thousand square miles, which means that it is only half 
as large as New England and yet bigger than many 
of the thriving countries of Europe. It is twice the size 
of Switzerland, almost three times that of Holland or 
Belgium, and more than one fourth as large as Great 
Britain and Ireland. The country has double the popula¬ 
tion of Switzerland or Finland, and more than twice the 
number of inhabitants in Denmark or Norway. 

Among the assets of Austria are its mines and its for¬ 
ests. Many think the land has no mineral resources. The 
truth is there is high-grade iron, a mountain of it, which 
in normal times yields two million tons of ore a year. That 
means forty thousand carloads, or enough to fill a train 
reaching from New York to Philadelphia. Most of this ore 
is used for making open-hearth pig iron. There are now two 
hundred and fifty iron mills, more than a hundred machine 
shops, seven locomotive works, and nine automobile 
plants. The country has also magnesite, which it ships 
in large quantities to the United States, where it is used in 
the manufacture of paints, paper, and fire brick, as well as 
in the preparation of magnesia and Epsom salts. 

As to forests, the present Austria is more heavily wooded 


20 


AUSTRIA, THE REPUBLIC 

than any of the countries of Europe except Finland, 
Sweden, and Russia. A great deal of this is soft wood 
and a large part of western Europe is supplied with wood 
pulp from the Austrian forests. The paper mills of the 
country are turning out one hundred and fifty thousand 
tons of mechanical pulp, and almost that much cellulose 
every year. They are making one hundred and eighty 
thousand tons of paper, much of it news-print, which 
is shipped all over the world. 

It is true that Austria has now no black coal to speak 
of, yet she has many waterfalls that will develop electricity. 
Only a small proportion of the possibilities have been ex¬ 
ploited, but the available powers are nearly equal to those of 
Switzerland and almost half as great as those of France or 
Italy. Already the government has begun to electrify the 
railroads, and a project is under way which will ultimately 
save in the neighbourhood of a half million tons of coal an¬ 
nually. On my way up the Danube I saw electric trains 
moving along the Austrian side, and I was told I could go 
from Bratislava to Vienna by trolley. I understand that 
the Austrians have invented a new electric locomotive 
superior to any we have in America. The government 
plans eventually to have all the railways electrified. It 
is estimated that full development of her waterpower 
would save Austria’s railroads three million tons of coal, 
her industries and agriculture four and a half million tons, 
and her households one million tons. In terms of money, 
that means a saving of sixty million dollars. 

Austria cannot feed herself and she will always have 
to rely to a certain extent upon her commerce and the 
products of her factories to pay for what cannot be raised 
on the farms. The farm lands, put together, equal a tract 


I2I 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

one fifth the size of Ohio. They lie chiefly in the valley of 
the Danube in lower Austria, and on the slopes of the 
Alps. Much of the arable area is unfarmed, however, and 
Austria now raises less than half of her food requirements. 
It is estimated that with intensive effort she can increase 
this to seventy per cent. 

Stockraising is important in many districts; Vorarlberg, 
Tyrol, Carinthia, and Styria breed fine cattle, and good 
horses are raised, especially in Salzburg. Parts of Carin¬ 
thia and Styria hum with bees, which distil honey from 
acres of buckwheat blossoms. 

Austria is a land of factories. It turns out machinery, 
furniture, leather, and chemical goods. Its pianos are 
among the best in the world. Tens of thousands of its 
people are making ready-to-wear clothes and other thou¬ 
sands are engaged in manufacturing lingerie and under¬ 
wear. The country is still an important textile centre, 
having eleven thousand cotton looms with more than one 
million spindles besides mills making woollens and linens. 

Such are the chief assets of the Austria arising from the 
ashes of humiliation and despair following the World War. 
The once proud monarchy is no more. The nobles and the 
haughty government officials have been pulled down from 
their high places. A spirit of democracy is abroad in the 
land. Realizing at last all that has happened, Austria has 
now put away her ambitions to be a great power in Europe, 
and has faced the fact of her lesser estate. 

Indeed, I am reminded of what the old coloured woman 
said to one of her “ white ladies.'' She had asked when the 
latter intended to get married and the lady had laughed 
and replied, ‘'No, Mammy, I'm not going to get married 
at all; I’m going to be an old maid." 


122 


AUSTRIA, THE REPUBLIC 

Mammy looked at her white friend for a minute, and 
then said, “Yes’m, I reckon you is right. They tells me 
it’s a lot better when you quit strugglin’.” 

Austria seems to have ''quit strugglin’,” and to have 
decided to make the best of herself as she is. 


CHAPTER XVI 


IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE HAPSBURGS 

ESTERDAY I spent in talks with the men who 



are directing Austria in the paths of health and 


sanity. To-day I have been following in the 


^ > footsteps of the haughty rulers whose mistaken 
policies drove the nation to the verge of despair. The 
Hapsburgs belonged to one of the oldest of the royal 
houses of Europe. The first of them, an old robber- 
baron named Rudolph, took the throne of Austria more 
than two hundred years before Columbus discovered 
America. It was in 1273 that the family began to live at 
the expense of the people and they fed at the public crib 
from then until the twilight of the kings that came with 
the World War. How well they fared one may guess by 
going through their mighty palaces, now open to sightseers, 
who tramp through rooms once reserved exclusively for 
royalty. 

I visited this afternoon a little summer palace that 
you will not find mentioned in the guide books. It was 
built by Erancis Joseph for his wife, the Empress Elizabeth, 
who was stabbed in Geneva by an anarchist nearly three 
decades ago. It was afterward used as a sort of hunting 
lodge by the royal family. This palace is a cream-coloured 
brick building of the dimensions of a seaside hotel, and 
has about it a tract of seven thousand acres of forest, with 
magnificent lawns and long, winding paths and roadways. 


124 


IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE HAPSBURGS 

The house is filled with beautiful paintings, and one great 
hall has its ceiling and walls decorated with scenes from 
Shakespeare’s ''Midsummer Night’s Dream.” There 
are some pieces of splendid furniture, including beds as 
wide as the great bed at Ware. One plain, simple room 
was the Emperor’s own. It is the room of a hermit. 
Francis Joseph had no frills and furbelows about him and 
his bed was of a three quarters size and made of iron. I 
'can buy dozens just like it in any town in America for 
ten dollars apiece. I inquired in vain for the bathroom, 
for there is none, although the building is lighted by 
electricity. The palace is now rented for a sum equal in 
our money to two hundred dollars a year. 

For six and a half centuries the Hapsburg monarchs 
lived in the great, rambling group of buildings in Vienna, 
known as the Hofburg. Now many of those rooms that 
witnessed the pomp and circumstance of court life echo to 
the clack of modern typewriters and the walls look down on 
clerks and officials at their daily business routine, some 
of them seated on gilded chairs at Buhl tables. In 1805, 
when Napoleon was bombarding Vienna, there lay in the 
Hofburg a young princess, who had been too ill to leave 
the city with the rest of the imperial family. When the 
French general learned of this, he ordered that the direc¬ 
tion of the guns be changed so that the palace might 
be spared. Thus he perhaps saved the life of Marie Louise, 
who a few years later became his wife and the Empress of 
the French. 

One of the buildings of the Hofburg still houses the 
old riding school, founded by Charles VI in 1729, and ever 
since famous for its magnificent Spanish horses. It was 
kept up for the pleasure of the imperial family, who used to 
125 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

give private performances for their friends. When Doctor 
Zimmerman, the expert brought to Austria from Holland 
to carry out the plans of the League of Nations for her 
rehabilitation, was looking about for possible economies, 
his eye fell on the riding school. It seemed doomed to go, 
but the chief riding master declared that he would make 
his stables self-supporting. This he has done by having 
a drill every now and then, to which any one is admitted 
upon the payment of a fee. So now commoners sit in the 
royal box and watch the twenty-eight splendid stallions 
that are left go through their paces. 

Schonbrunn was the EmperoEs summer residence and 
was accessible to the public only during his absence. It is 
now the great holiday resort of the people. There were 
thousands moving about through the grounds when I went 
there last Sunday. I visited the swimming pool, which 
covers at least half an acre and is so deep that no one ex¬ 
cept a giant like Goliath, who as I remember it was nine 
feet nine inches tall, could stand up in it. It was filled 
with men and women who had paid a few cents apiece for 
the privilege of swimming there. This pool was sacred to 
the Empress Elizabeth who had it made deep, for she was 
one of the great imperial athletes of her time, and loved 
to hunt and ride and swim. 

Schonbrunn has a park of five hundred acres of woods 
surrounding its magnificent gardens. It stands on the 
site of a hunting lodge erected in 1570 and the present 
building was begun in 1696. Maria Theresa often lived 
at Schonbrunn, and she planned its present form. It was 
modelled after the palace at Versailles. For a palace, 
the building itself is not large, being a two-story structure 
only six hundred and fifty feet long. There are seats 
126 



Millstaat, on its deep lake, is a typical village of the mountains of 
Carinthia. It is surrounded by pine forests, which cover a large part of 
the district and furnish pulp for Austria’s thriving paper-making industry. 





Schonbrunn Park with its straight walks and giant clipped hedges, its 
grottoes and ponds and statues, is a good example of the old French palace 
prden. Schonbrunn, like most of the palaces of its day, was designed in 
imitation of Versailles. 






IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE HAPSBURGS 


round the garden which contains perhaps twenty acres 
of lawns and beautiful flower plots. In some places 
benches are free to all, but one is charged for a seat on 
the iron chairs. I took two chairs for myself and my 
companion, and a little later an old woman came around 
and told me the fee was one hundred and eighty kronen 
each. I handed her a thousand-kronen note, and she 
started away. I called her back, demanding my change. 
She grumbled but handed me back six hundred and forty 
crowns, which I was tempted to return, but my friend 
objected, saying that the woman had overcharged us and 
that it would not do to reward her dishonesty. The 
amount in question was less than three fourths of a cent. 

Every part of Schonbrunn is rich in historical associa¬ 
tion. From where I sat I could see the Gloriette, the stone 
pavilion to which Maria Theresa used so often to retire 
with her problems of state. When she grew so fat that her 
weak ankles would not permit her to climb stairs, she had 
a kind of elevator made to raise her to the balcony on the 
top of the colonnade, whence she commanded a fine view 
across the parks and gardens to the city, then several 
miles away. 

In 1805 and again four years later Napoleon made the 
palace his headquarters during his occupation of Vienna. 
In the courtyard here he held reviews of his troops, while 
crowds of the Viennese looked on and marvelled at the 
little man who had subjugated Europe. It was to this 
palace that, following Napoleon's abdication, Marie Louise 
returned with her young son, the King of Rome. And here, 
as the Duke of Reichstadt, the boy died at the age of 
twenty-one in the same room and even in the same bed 
that his father had occupied as the conqueror of Austria. 
127 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

Another bedroom in the palace was that of Emperor 
Maximilian of Mexico, the brother of Francis Joseph. On 
the wall hangs his portrait beside that of his wife Carlotta, 
who, as you remember, went insane with grief when her 
husband was shot. 

Kings and emperors have their advantages in that they 
can construct fine buildings, establish opera houses and 
theatres, and gather together paintings and sculptures that 
may be enjoyed by all. For example, there is the Votive 
Church in Vienna with Gothic towers that remind one of 
Cologne Cathedral, although this edifice is much smaller. 
One February afternoon in 1853, the young and popular 
Emperor Francis Joseph was walking on the old fortifica¬ 
tion wall of Vienna when a Hungarian fanatic tried to 
plunge a dagger into the monarch’s neck. But the Em¬ 
peror’s military collar, stiff with gold lace and braid, turned 
the assassin’s knife, and later on this church was set up 
as a thank-offering for the ruler’s escape from death. 

One of the strangest sacred buildings 1 know of is the 
Loretto Chapel, built in 1627 as part of the court church by 
the wife of Ferdinand 11 for the purpose it has served since 
then. Here in silver urns are preserved the hearts of the 
emperors and empresses who have ruled in Austria during 
the past three centuries. 

Until about three hundred years ago the royal dead were 
buried in St. Stephen’s Cathedral, but since then they have 
been laid in the crypt of the old Church of the Capuchins. 
A double sarcophagus contains the bodies of Maria Theresa 
and her idolized and handsome husband, Francis I. Near 
by are the coffins of all except one of their sixteen children. 
Not far away are the remains of Marie Louise, Empress of 
the French, and of her son, the Duke of Reichstadt. Here, 
128 


IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE HAPSBURGS 

too, lies Maximilian of Mexico. After the ill-fated dictator 
was shot, Emperor Francis Joseph asked Juarez, the 
President of Mexico, to allow the remains to be returned to 
Austria. At last this request was granted and in the same 
ship in which Maximilian and Carlotta had sailed to the 
New World on their great adventure the body was borne 
back to Austria for burial. 

Beside a statue of the Virgin reposes the Empress Eliza¬ 
beth, the most beautiful queen in all Europe until her life 
was shattered by the death of her only son. Crown Prince 
Rudolph, whose colfin is near her own. He committed sui¬ 
cide eight years after his unhappy marriage to Princess 
Stephanie of Belgium. His mother sank gradually into 
greater and greater depths of melancholy and spent less 
and less of her time in Austria. She probably cared but 
little when the assassin at Geneva plunged his sharpened 
shoemaker’s awl into her heart. 

It was not until eighteen years later that her husband, 
the aged Francis Joseph, at length came to rest with his 
ancestors in the vault. He is the last of the Hapsburgs 
to lie there, for his nephew and successor, Charles, is 
buried where he died in exile. His body is in Funchal on 
the island of Madeira, though some day it may be taken 
up and brought to the Church of the Capuchins. 


129 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE COUNTRY OF THE MAGYARS 


C zechoslovakia is a land of the peasant, 

whose greatest men have sprung from the soil 
and whose people believe in democracy; Aus- 
tria is gradually growing accustomed to demo¬ 
cratic ideas, but Hungary is a land of the aristocrat where 
the nobility still rules. What is left of Hungary's portion 
of the old empire is now ruled by a regent, but ninety- 
five per cent, of the people, I am told, want to live under 
a king. 

The Hungarians believe their country was not as well 
treated by the Powers as was Germany when peace was 
patched up. The Germans lost about ten per cent, of 
their people and a comparatively small fraction of their 
territory. Hungary lost sixty-eight per cent, of her terri¬ 
tory and almost two thirds of her people. I have talked 
with the highest officials and with Hungarians of all 
classes, but I have yet to find one who is satisfied with the 
Treaty of Trianon. In that treaty the Powers divided the 
country, giving generous slices of it to Rumania, Yugo¬ 
slavia, and Czechoslovakia. 

Just now the land is quiet and the people are doing 
as well as they can under the conditions forced upon them, 
for Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Yugoslavia have erected 
tariff walls along their Hungarian boundaries, making 
trade with them difficult, and have placed many restric- 
130 



Hungary is the home of fortune-telling gypsies, who ply their trade in 
the cities. Many of these wanderers also live in the country, where 
they are noted for letting their children go naked, even in cold weather. 




In spite of centuries of oppression under despotic governments and 
their present hardships, the Magyar peasants are gay, happy-go-lucky 
folk, who seize every possible occasion to have a good time. 



Under the watchful eye of the noble owner of a great Hungarian 
estate, or one of his foremen, gangs of men and women bend their 
backs at work in the fields from dawn until dark. 






THE COUNTRY OF THE MAGYARS 

tions on the Hungarians still living in the ceded territories. 
It is claimed that the Hungarians were the intelligentsia 
of those countries. They did most of the business and 
international trade was almost entirely in their hands. 
Under the present conditions it is difficult for the Magyars 
to reestablish their former connections, and commerce 
and industry are suffering. 

Yet I believe that, given a fair chance, Hungary will 
quickly get back on her feet and be one of the enterpris¬ 
ing and progressive nations of central Europe. The gov¬ 
ernment is already planning many public improvements. 
Budapest has a new scheme for extending the city along 
modern lines, and land and educational reforms are 
planned. Hitherto the Magyars have been held back by 
the Austrians. They are now independent and will ad¬ 
vance rapidly. 

I hear many complaints against the government, which 
rules the people with an iron hand. But a member of the 
nobility, who is one of the strong men of his country and 
wants a monarchy, said to me the other day: 

“We need that kind of government. We are not easily 
ruled. You remember what someone has said of your im¬ 
migrants: 'When the German comes to America, he 
buckles down to work and forges ahead; when the Irish¬ 
man comes, he jumps into politics and joins the police; 
but when the Hungarian comes, he starts factions among 
his own people and is ready to fight.’ Here everyone 
wants to rule and we need an autocrat to keep us in order.” 

I find it difficult to give a clean-cut picture of the situa¬ 
tion here in the valley of the Danube. The old Hungary 
was one of the richest areas on the continent of Europe. 
It consisted of a great rolling plain bounded on the north- 

131 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 


east and southeast by the Drave and Danube rivers. It 
extended eastward to the sea at Fiume, so that it had 
access through the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean. 
The country formed a geographic and economic unit which 
could have been walled in and yet would have remained 
self-sustaining. There were vast forests, wheat lands, and 
vineyards; there were minerals, including the coal and iron 
needed for industry. The country was well supplied with 
waterways and the railroads formed a network connecting 
with the trunk lines to all the great markets. 

The former kingdom contained one hundred and twenty- 
five thousand square miles. It was more than three times 
the size of Ohio, and larger than Great Britain and Ireland, 
and it supported twenty millions of people. When the 
Powers came to consider it, they found it was inhabited 
by a half-dozen different races and they proceeded to 
cut off a slice here and a bit there on the basis of racial 
divisions. They wanted to clip the wings of the Magyars 
and to form new republics and kingdoms that would 
be more easily controlled in the future. Altogether, they 
took away more than two thirds of the original territory, 
leaving the shrunken Hungary of to-day. What remains is 
not much larger than South Carolina. It contains a 
population of eight million, most of whom are Magyars, 
the proudest, the most spirited, and, in some respects, the 
most progressive people of central Europe. 

What the Powers have done makes me think of the re¬ 
mark of John Pierpont Morgan, the elder, when he was 
told that the Steel Trust must be dissolved and put back 
into the old companies of which it was made. He replied: 
“You can’t do it, gentlemen. How can you unscramble 
eggs?” I am reminded, too, of the farm boy who was 
132 


THE COUNTRY OF THE MAGYARS 

asked if he could play the violin. He replied: I guess so. 
I never tried it, but it looks easy.” 

The Powers around the conference table evidently 
thought they could unscramble the eggs in the geogra¬ 
phic and commercial entity that was Hungary until 
1919. Count Teleki, the statesman-geographer, who is 
one of the best economic thinkers of central Europe, has 
told me, for instance, how the treaty makers disarranged 
the whole water system of the Danube. That river is 
much like the Mississippi in that its floods have to be 
controlled and vast sums must be expended annually to 
keep the waters in order. Before the war most of the sys¬ 
tem of flood control was under the Hungarian Kingdom. 

Hungary began the work of reclamation more than one 
hundred years ago and built enough dikes twenty feet high 
along the Danube and the Tisza to line both sides of the 
Mississippi from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. The total 
length of those dikes is four thousand miles. Further¬ 
more, the government has dug eight thousand miles of 
canals. It has protected from floods a tract of land as 
large as West Virginia, and reclaimed from the swamps 
more than fifteen million acres. All the reclaimed lands 
of Holland are only a little more than one third as exten¬ 
sive as the areas that were reclaimed by Hungary. 

This flood-prevention system had hundreds of rain 
gauges and water gauges along the courses of the river far 
up in the mountains. There were sixteen hundred obser¬ 
vation and alarm stations equipped with telephones. The 
government issued daily reports of the water levels, and 
there were about eighty cooperative companies keeping 
the locks and the dikes in repair. 

When the treaty was made the system of water control 

133 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

was cut to pieces. A triple management was established 
so that Hungary has now to rely upon Czechoslovakia 
and Rumania to help her keep back the water. She can no 
longer control the forests that conserve her water supply, 
and an area of something like six million acres is in con¬ 
stant danger of floods. Large tracts are also likely to 
suffer from drought, for lack of the former unified control 
of the river waters. If a satisfactory joint water control 
could be established, it is estimated that a wheat crop 
worth about forty million dollars a year could be raised on 
irrigated land. 

In unscrambling the eggs, the Powers chopped off the 
railways as far as through service is concerned. The 
country was covered with lines reaching to all the great 
markets. Now a ride of a few hours in any direction 
brings one to a new frontier, where a foreign customs 
house holds up the traffic. 

Farm labour conditions were badly disorganized through 
the partition of Hungary. The valley of the Danube is 
much like that of the Mississippi. It is one of the rich¬ 
est farming tracts on the globe, and there is a succession 
of harvesting seasons as one goes from the Black Sea to 
Vienna. In the United States we have an army of harves¬ 
ters who start in Texas and Oklahoma and work their way 
north to the Dakotas as the summer matures. Until the 
World War, it was the same in the valley of the Danube, 
but now the harvesters are stopped at the frontiers of each 
country and the labourers are unable to follow the crop 
unless they get passports. Moreover, racial feeling is so 
strong that it might be unhealthy for the Rumanian or 
Czech to work on the Hungarian plain. 


134 



On the site of the old Roman citadel at Budapest rises the marble 
palace of six hundred rooms which was built by Maria Theresa and 
occupied occasionally by the monarchs of the old Austria-Hungary. 



Budapest has lined both banks of the Danube with boulevards inter¬ 
spersed with parks and quays and has made it easy for the people to for¬ 
get their political troubles in recreation out of doors. 











The fashionable promenade of Budapest is the Corso, which is thronged 
every evening with well-dressed men and women. It is lined with outdoor 
cafes, where the people sit and listen to the music of gypsy bands. 




CHAPTER XVIII 


BUDAPEST, WHERE EAST AND WEST MEET 

Oh, East is East, and West is West, 

And never the twain shall meet. 

Till Earth and Sky stand presently 
At God’s great Judgment Seat. 


R UDYARD KIPLING is wrong. The East and 
the West have met here at the capital of Hun¬ 
gary. Budapest is the beginning of the East 
- that looks toward Constantinople, and the end 
of the West that faces toward Paris. Hungary is a great 
succotash of the nations. The Hungarian people migrated 
from the little nest in the Ural Mountains, where more 
than a thousand years ago some seven tribes joined to¬ 
gether under a Magyar prince called Arpad. They made 
their way across the steppes of Russia, gathering up a 
scattering of Einns who had drifted down from the forests 
of the North, and captured the rich Hungarian Plain in 
the basin of the Danube. 

Other peoples had preceded them there. From the 
West had come the Romans, eager for this bread basket of 
Europe, which has always been coveted by the nations. 
Before Christ was born they had fought their way into 
the valley of the Danube and built settlements here. 
From the East had come also Avars and Huns, but they 
failed to weld the valley lands into a state. Equally un¬ 
successful were the Goths, the Lombards, and the Franks 

135 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

from the West. Finally the Magyars came in from Asia 
and took the land. Before the year looo the Hungarians 
had established a line of rulers descended from Arpad 
and had introduced Christianity. In the first year of the 
eleventh century Saint Stephen, patron saint of the coun¬ 
try, received from Pope Sylvester 11 the golden crown 
used at the coronations of all later kings of Hungary. 
Stephen I brought in German settlers from the West with 
a view to giving his people a greater measure of civili¬ 
zation. In the early part of the fifteenth century the 
Turks began to make inroads on the kingdom, which they 
overthrew at the battle of Mohacs in 1526. After that 
the country was under Turkish domination for a hundred 
and fifty years. Following the defeat of the Moslems at 
Vienna in 1683, however, Hungary was freed from the yoke 
of the Sultan, but in return for the help of the Austrians, 
the Magyar crown was made hereditary in the Hapsburg 
line. 

Thus East and West swayed back and forth over the 
fertile plains of Hungary. Both Orient and Occident have 
left their marks, as one can easily see in Budapest to¬ 
day. Here the Gothic, the Romanesque, and the Oriental 
styles of architecture appear side by side. 

The Royal Palace, the great castle on the heights 
of Buda high over the Danube, has a half dozen great 
domes rising above a wilderness of Greek and Roman col¬ 
umns, while its interior blazes with Eastern magnificence. 
It is one of the mightiest palaces ever constructed. It 
is more than a thousand feet long, and its rooms number 
eight hundred and sixty. It was built by the Empress 
Maria Theresa three quarters of a century ago. To-day 
the Hungarian people keep it as a residence for a monarch 
136 


BUDAPEST, WHERE EAST AND WEST MEET 

of the future, and when another king comes to the Hun¬ 
garian throne, he will probably live there. 

Not far from it is the Coronation Church, begun in the 
thirteenth century in the Romanesque style and com¬ 
pleted in the fifteenth in the Gothic. It was used as a 
mosque by the Turks and the marble statue of the Virgin 
looks down on the floor which the Mohammedans touched 
with their heads in their prayers. 

Even the present Parliament Building, where the one 
house of the Hungarian Congress is now sitting, is a 
combination of the East and the West. It has a great 
oriental-looking dome in the centre and more than a dozen 
Gothic spires rising from its walls. 

I wish I could take you through this national Capitol. 
It covers as much ground as the Congressional Library at 
Washington and it cost more. Its construction stretched 
over almost twenty years, or just about as long as it took 
to erect the Great Pyramid of Egypt. On the outside there 
are ninety statues, and within you bump into the image of 
some national hero at almost every step. The windows 
are of stained glass, the floors are of parquetry or marble, 
and the walls are coloured marbles inlaid with gold. 

A porter accompanied me through the building and, 
figuratively speaking, gave me the keys. I visited the 
gorgeous House of Lords. Its seats are empty to-day, but 
as I looked at them my guide said: “They will be filled as 
soon as we again have a king.'’ 

“And when will that be?” I asked. 

“It may be in ten years and it may be in twenty, but 
it is sure to come sooner or later. Hungary has had kings 
for one thousand years. We like them and we want a 
king back on our throne once more.” 

137 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 


My way into the top gallery of the House was up wind¬ 
ing stone steps like those of a cathedral, lighted by win¬ 
dows with as many colours as the coat Jacob had made for 
Joseph before the boy was sold down into Egypt. When I 
came out, it was into a great dome-shaped room that re¬ 
minded me somewhat of a mosque of Turkey or India. 
Here again the East and the West seemed to meet. The 
lower house of Congress sits in a hall that is a combination 
of the interiors of a cathedral, a mosque, and a palace. The 
galleries are divided into boxes like those of a theatre, 
and each box has its pillars carved and encrusted with 
gold. There is a slice cut out of one side of the cham¬ 
ber, and against the flat wall sat the Speaker. Below, 
the members were seated at desks in concentric rows. In 
a little arena in front of the clerks were the ministers 
of state seated in red velvet chairs. 

With one exception, all the members were dressed in 
business suits. The exception wore silk and I venture had 
on high-heeled shoes. She was black-haired and black- 
eyed and the only woman member of the Hungarian Con¬ 
gress. She is a Socialist. 

The people of Budapest show everywhere evidence of 
the blending of the East and the West, although since the 
Treaty of Trianon carved up Hungary one sees fewer of the 
Germans and the Czechs and a greater number of the pure 
Magyar type than in the past. The faces show the mix¬ 
ture of races, but the life and the fighting spirit of the 
Magyar are everywhere predominant. The women are 
especially beautiful; more beautiful, I think, than any I 
have seen elsewhere. They have olive complexions, dark, 
luxuriant hair, and great dark eyes. They walk with a 
swing, and they have fine figures. 

138 


BUDAPEST, WHERE EAST AND WEST MEET 

Every afternoon the Francis Joseph promenade along 
the Danube is alive with a throng of the well-to-do men 
and women strolling back and forth. They go singly and 
arm in arm, lovers, sweethearts, husbands and wives mov¬ 
ing on side by side. There are officers in gorgeous uniforms 
and representatives of half-a-dozen different nationalities 
and as many different creeds, the Greek Catholic, and the 
Roman Catholic, the Protestant and the Jew all mixed up 
together. This is the social hour of the city and much of it 
is spent in drinking tea, coffee, or liqueurs at the many cafes 
that line the route. Even more than in Vienna or Paris is it 
the fashion in Budapest to frequent outdoor restaurants. 
Except in cold weather there are tables on the street and 
thousands sit about them talking or listening to the music 
of the gypsy bands, which, it seems to me, are playing 
from sunset to far into the wee hours of the morning. 

I had thought of this part of the world as having a 
civilization a little lower than that of the other European 
capitals. If so, no lack appears in the dress, the talk, or 
the manners of the people. The women know how to buy 
their clothes and how to wear them. Their frocks look as 
if they had just come from the shops of Paris. The men 
are especially particular about their dress, and the dandies 
have a fashion of harmonizing the colours, from stockings 
to collars. On official occasions the men are meticulous 
about their costumes. The uncomfortable silk hat still 
holds sway and at day-time events the morning cutaway 
suit is much in evidence. The men make me think 
of that stiff member of the Crawley family in ‘Wanity 
Fair” of whom Thackeray says: ''He would rather die 
than sit down to dinner without a white necktie.” 

Everyone here dines late. At seven o'clock there is 
139 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

no one in the dining rooms of the hotels, and the restau¬ 
rants do not begin to fill up until nine. From then until 
after midnight the eating goes on, many people taking 
nothing until after they leave the theatre or opera. The 
gypsy band at the Dunapolata Hotel, where I am stopping, 
plays from nine until two o’clock in the morning. 

The food at the hotels is good. Pastries and sweets are 
shipped from Budapest all over Europe. The beef, the 
mutton, and the pork are equal to those of Chicago. Some 
of the dishes are similar to ours. There is, for instance, 
kukurei, which means corn on the cob, and one bites it off 
just as he does in America. Another favourite dish is 
paprikahuhn, or chicken dressed with red pepper, and 
another is gulvas, or goulasch, which is a steamed dish 
highly peppered. Gefulltes paprika consists of pepper 
pods filled with meat, and there is a delicious chowder 
called halasile. The restaurants serve a kind of macaroni 
with chicken, called tarhonva, which takes up a permanent 
residence in one’s stomach. The coffee is good and is 
served black in French or Turkish style as ordered. 

It is difficult for the foreigner to know what to eat from 
the bill of fare, for it is printed in Magyar, which someone 
has said is a Hungarian goulash of the words the Tartars 
and the Finns could not spell or pronounce and so threw 
out of their languages. The combinations of letters ap¬ 
pear meaningless to me. The words are full of consonants 
and the marks over the vowels add to the confusion. The 
accent always falls on the first syllable. In names of 
persons the family name is put first. For instance, I at¬ 
tended an Independence Day celebration here when the 
crowd hurrahed for George Washington. The speaker 
who started the cheers shouted '‘Heep, Heep-Ooray,” 
140 


BUDAPEST, WHERE EAST AND WEST MEET 


with the accent on the “oo"’ and the cry was for ''Wash¬ 
ington George.” 

The observance of our Fourth of July took place in 
front of the great bronze statue of Washington that 
the Hungarians of America have erected in the Cen¬ 
tral Park of Budapest to show their appreciation of their 
adopted country. Everyone here seems to like the 
United States; and no greater tribute could be given our 
nation than the thousands of all classes who stood with 
bared heads for more than an hour in the broiling mid¬ 
summer sun while the speeches were made. 

Budapest has grown considerably in the last few years. 
At the time of the World War it had less than eight hun¬ 
dred thousand people; it has now more than a million and 
the population is increasing right along. Like all of the 
capitals of this part of the world, it has had large accessions 
on account of the changes in boundaries. The Hungarians 
claim that they are persecuted in Rumania, Czechoslovakia, 
and Yugoslavia, and those who wish to retain their 
citizenship in the mother country are flocking back home. 
Many who owned property in what was once a part of the 
kingdom have been compelled to sell at low prices, and 
as a result there are upwards of a hundred thousand 
refugees in Budapest. This is one of the chief reasons for 
the increase of more than three hundred thousand in 
population within two or three years. There is naturally 
a great lack of housing facilities, and the prices of apart¬ 
ments and rooms are steadily rising. 

Budapest has a large intellectual class. Hungary 
has four universities, including one here at Budapest 
which has above ten thousand students. The city has 
a school of economics with twenty-five hundred students, 
141 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

and a technical high school with more than three thousand. 
Count Paul Teleki, the well-known professor of economic 
geography, tells me that he has eight hundred men in 
attendance upon his lectures and that one of them is a 
general of sixty-three who takes his notes side by side with 
beardless boys of nineteen and twenty. 

Most of the students are comparatively poor. Many 
of them have lost their all in the countries cut off from 
Hungary, and a large proportion are working their way 
through the universities by clerking or other labour during 
the day. Some have places in the banks, which close here 
atone o'clock, and others are employed in the jewellery 
stores, which close at four. The rest of the shops are 
open until six, when steel shutters come down over the 
windows, hiding everything until late the next morning. 

Among other ways of reducing expenses the students 
have established cooperative societies. They have cloth¬ 
ing factories where they work part of the day to make 
clothes to sell to each other at cost price or a little more, 
and shoe factories where they make their own shoes. 
They have established a printing house with a half-dozen 
presses where they print some of their textbooks and 
lecture notes. 


142 



The Hungarian peasants live in villages from which they go out each 
morning to work on the land. The houses are usually of one story, with 
white walls and broad oyerhanging eaves of thatch or red tile. 






It is only on the large estates of the Magyar nobles that modern 
machinery and scientific farming methods are used. The Hungarian peas¬ 
ant tills his own patch of land with the crude implements of his forefathers. 



CHAPTER XIX 


BREAD LANDS OF THE DANUBE 

HE car was a Eiat manufactured in Italy, sold in 



Austria, owned in Hungary, and driven by a 


Magyar daredevil, a descendant of the invaders 


that overran this Danube basin more than a 
thousand years ago. It was a seven-passenger, thirty- 
five-horsepower machine, which could easily be speeded 
up to fifty miles an hour, and the chauffeur fairly burned 
the road as we travelled. We left Budapest in the early 
morning, crossing the suspension bridge to the south 
side of the river, flying by factory buildings, and then 
shooting out into the country. 

We followed the river past the island where the city 
plans to build municipal docks, and thence drove on into 
the grain lands of the Danube. The white macadamized 
roads were lined with fruit trees, with boys perched here 
and there in the branches, and beyond them, extending as 
far as the eye could see, were the many-coloured crops. 
Eields of rye, oats, barley, wheat, sugar beets, and al¬ 
falfa in different shades of green were now and then bor¬ 
dered by poppies as red as fresh blood. There was noth¬ 
ing to obstruct the view, no fences, no barns, no houses, 
and no haystacks. Nature alone was the architect, and 
there popped into my mind the old saying: 


God made the country and man made the town. 

143 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

For miles we rode through patches no bigger than a 
parlour rug, and strips of grass or grain ten, fifteen, or 
twenty feet wide and many hundred feet long. How 
the peasants know their own boundaries is hard to under¬ 
stand, but they till these ribbon-like tracts year after 
year, going out from their villages at dawn to work in 
the fields, and returning home from them when the sun 
sets. 

When we came to the estates of some of the big land¬ 
holders, the fields were enormous. The usual area de¬ 
voted to one crop was fifty acres. Sometimes we passed 
through vineyards where the hills were covered with thou¬ 
sands of stakes as high as my waist, each of which sup¬ 
ported a grapevine as carefully tended as a rosebush in 
your garden. The vines of Hungary are cut down to 
the ground year after year, and as the plants grow up 
again they are tied to stakes with straw so as not to injure 
the stems. They are thoroughly sprayed and the soil 
between the rows is kept free of weeds. When the fruit 
ripens it is made into wine, most of the vineyards having 
their own wine presses. 

Hungary is one of the great wine-making countries of 
Europe, and its Tokay and other vintages are known 
everywhere. But the import restrictions of Hungary's 
neighbours are now so stringent that the foreign market 
has been largely cut off, and out in the country one can 
buy a quart of delicious wine for a nickel. 

During my two-hundred-mile ride I visited the grape¬ 
growing region about Lake Balaton, the largest lake in cen¬ 
tral Europe and one hundred miles from Budapest. The 
hills surrounding it are mostly covered with vineyards and 
forests, but in places there are fields of grain crops sloping 
144 


BREAD LANDS OF THE DANUBE 

down to the water. I looked across vast stretches of 
wheat, oats, and rye, pale yellow or the colour of gold, to 
the silvery sheet of the water beyond. 

The lake, which is fifty miles long and from two to nine 
miles wide, is a beautiful body of water, light green in 
colour and very deep. It swarms with fine fish, among 
which are perch, carp, pike, and shad, and also the fogas, 
which is almost as sweet as the shad, but which seems to 
have only one bone up the back. 

Lake Balaton is the great resort of the Hungarians. 
Many rich men have splendid houses and beautiful gardens 
on its shores, and the region is sometimes called the 
Riviera of central Europe. There are several large hotels 
and I visited a big sanatorium for tubercular patients 
who come here to get the benefit of the air from the pines 
and the lake. 

It was here at Lake Balaton that Charles, the last 
Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, was interned by 
his people. Banished to Switzerland, he tried twice to 
come back and regain his throne. When he came first he 
was favoured by the higher clergy and the aristocracy, 
but Admiral Horthy, the Regent, would not give up his 
job without an order from the National Assembly. More¬ 
over, the Allies had said that no Hapsburg should reign 
again in Hungary, so the officials advised Charles to leave, 
and he went back to Switzerland. That was in the 
spring. In the following October he got a Swiss airplane, 
took his Empress Zita with him, and flew back to Hun¬ 
gary. Here he was met by a small army of royalists, but 
the countries of the Little Entente reenforced their sol¬ 
diers on Hungary's borders with three divisions, and the 
King's troops were defeated with a loss of several hundred, 

145 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

killed and wounded. A little later the government asked 
Charles to abdicate the throne and surrender himself 
to the British authorities. He did so, and was put on a 
British gunboat in the Danube and taken to Funchal on 
the island of Madeira, where he died. His young son. 
Prince Otto, who is now a guest of his cousin, Alfonso of 
Spain, is the legitimate successor to the throne of the 
Hapsburgs. 

From Lake Balaton I drove across country to visit the 
estate of Count Batthyanyi. Like other members of the 
Hungarian nobility, the count is highly educated, a good 
horseman, and an expert farmer. He can trace his 
ancestry back to the earliest days of Magyar history and 
lives in a mansion seven centuries old. During the past 
two hundred years, six successive generations of his family 
have held the estate. When I met him in his garden at 
the back of the mansion he looked, in his white flannels, as 
if he had just stepped out of a bandbox. 

We first walked through the gardens which covered 
several acres. The rose garden was gay with arbour after 
arbour of crimson ramblers, and other roses of different 
hues made bowers of gorgeous colour. There were also 
dwarf and other choice flowers of every description. 

Adjoining the roses was a sunken Italian garden paved 
with blocks of snowy marble, with flowers and vines grow¬ 
ing between the stones so as to form a great coverlet of 
white embroidered with green vines and brilliant verbenas, 
geraniums, and other plants, the names of which I do not 
know. We picked our way over the flags and walked 
through the wide colonnades around the mansion to its 
central court. Here we looked out over a plaza covering 
an acre, laid in mosaic patterns of red and white stones, 
146 



Budapest is one of the great flour-milling cities of the world. Most 
of the wheat is unloaded by machinery from barges in the river, but 
occasionally it is brought to the mills in the old-fashioned long sacks. 




Regardless of the political fortunes of Hungary, the wheat lands of 
the Danube will continue to feed millions of people of Central Europe, 
just as they have done in the past. 





BREAD LANDS OF THE DANUBE 


and through long avenues of trees trimmed to form vistas 
down which we gazed upon the count’s domain. 

And such a domain! It is a principality. It contains 
ten thousand acres divided into ten great farms of one 
thousand acres each, all under the highest cultivation, and 
all now ripe with the harvest. Count Batthyanyi ordered 
his car and we drove together over one of the farms. Each 
has its manager, and the methods of administration and 
cultivation are the same in all. There are five hundred 
workers regularly employed upon the estate. In addition 
to these there are hundreds of men and women, who come 
from their villages in April and stay until the crops are 
gathered and the fall planting is done. Everything is 
managed after the most approved business methods, and 
the property pays big dividends. 

For instance, the land is so tilled that the soil is kept 
rich while yielding annual crops far above those of equally 
good land in our country. I looked at one rye field where 
half the grain was yet to be cut. The sheaves had been 
stacked up in piles and the section already reaped was 
being ploughed by oxen. The count told me it paid him to 
have the plough follow the reapers. The spots on which the 
shocks stand are the only parts of the field left untouched 
until fall, when the whole is then turned over again with 
steam ploughs. Before it is planted again the earth will 
be as finely pulverized as that for a flower bed. 

We then drove past a tract of sugar beets and great 
plots of rye, barley, and turnips. Each farm, the count 
told me, is divided into fields of fifty acres each. He 
showed me one wheat field where the stalks were bent 
over by the heavily loaded heads. As I looked at it I 
saw that the yellow grain was in big patches of different 

147 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

hues and tints. I asked the reason for this. The owner 
replied that there were twenty-four diflferent kinds of 
wheat in the field, sown in blocks of about two acres to 
each kind, and that he was testing the varieties to find 
which was best adapted to the soil. He expects the whole 
field to produce about two thousand bushels, or forty 
bushels per acre. Compare that with our average of thir¬ 
teen or fourteen bushels to the acre! 

Count Batthyanyi is a plant breeder whose seed grain 
is sold throughout both Austria and Hungary. The 
estate supports a variety of industries. We passed fac¬ 
tories making alcohol, sugar, and other things so as to use 
as far as possible the raw materials grown here. There 
are nurseries supplying trees, plants, and flowers to a 
great part of central Europe. There are one hundred acres 
of vineyards, and big truck gardens, the products of which 
are shipped by train daily to Budapest and other cities. 
Even more interesting, however, are the fish ponds where 
Count Batthyanyi raises carp for Berlin, Vienna, and other 
European capitals. He has one pond of fifty acres on the 
farm 1 have described and on his son’s estate, not far 
away, there are fish ponds covering altogether three 
hundred and fifty acres. The fish are caught when just 
right for the market and shipped alive in cars fitted 
with water tanks. 

In our ride we crossed the steam railroads on each side 
of the estate, and went over the light railways built on 
the property. It was now almost sunset, but everywhere 
gangs of women and men were still working. I asked the 
count what wages he paid. He replied that the men 
got seven or eight cents a day, and the women a cent or 
so less. These are the wages of the floating labourers 


BREAD LANDS OF THE DANUBE 


that work through the summer. In addition they are given 
their food and sleep in barracks provided for them. Dur¬ 
ing the rush periods their hours are from dawn until dark. 

Each of the year-round employees living on the estate 
is given a plot of one or two acres of ground and allowed 
time to farm it. These workers also get rations and other 
supplies, besides regular wages, which are so small that 
our labourers would scorn them. 

I visited the quarters of these permanent employees. 
They were long, high, one-story, barrack-like buildings, 
with doors and windows looking out on gardens in front 
and with small windows at the back. I asked the owner 
how many rooms were allowed to a family. He replied 
that he was compelled by law to give each family a store¬ 
room, a living room, and a kitchen, but that in former 
times it was possible to crowd two or three families into 
one room. 

For generations Hungary has been feeding some of 
the neighbouring nations and 1 understand that, notwith¬ 
standing its shrunken area, it will still have tens of millions 
of bushels of wheat for export every year. What I have 
seen of the grain fields of the basin, the wheat barges on 
the rivers, and the flour mills of the city convinces me of 
the importance of Hungary as a bread basket of central 
Europe. 

Budapest is the Minneapolis of the continent. It 
lies on both sides of the Danube, just as our “Flour City’' 
lies on both sides of the Mississippi. Old Buda on the 
bluff and newer Pest on the lowlands are joined by bridges, 
just as are old St. Anthony and young Minneapolis, and 
both the Hungarian and the Minnesota cities are noted for 
their flour mills. 


149 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

At harvest time the Danube is filled with barges of 
wheat moving up to the mills. When they tie up at the 
docks the grain is sucked through pipes to the top floors 
of the grain elevators and moved about on belt conveyors. 
In the mills endless belts carry the bags of flour and drop 
them into the waiting barges. 

Even now Budapest claims that it ranks next to Minne¬ 
apolis among the hour-milling centres of the world. Its 
annual output is about half that of the Minnesota city, and 
plans had been made to triple the production when the 
war came and stopped them. 

Last week I visited what 1 am told is the biggest single 
flour mill on earth. It is situated within a stone's throw 
of the Danube, from which one great conveyor brings 
up the grain while another carries down the sacks of flour. 
The building is five stories tall, and adjoining it are two 
elevators, one for grain and the other for flour. All its 
machines are automatic and the number of labourers is 
•surprisingly few. I went through room after room in which 
only two or three men were to be seen. Just as in our own 
modern mills, the grain drops by gravity from process to 
process. The flour goes up and down on its way to the 
boats or the cars without being touched, and coal is auto¬ 
matically fed to the furnaces. I have been through the 
big mills of Minneapolis. They are wonderful in their 
construction, but they have not the finish and the extraor¬ 
dinary cleanliness of ‘'The Budapester." 

As far back as 1890 Budapest was manufacturing five 
million barrels of flour every year, while at that time 
Minneapolis was making only one million more. There 
are now in the capital a great number of flour mills 
equipped with modern machinery and paying big divi- 
150 



In the shell-torn forts around Belgrade one sees to-day the scars of 
the first blows struck in the World War, which began with the Austrian 
bombardment of the Serbian capital. 





Gypsy women with brooms of twigs clean the cobbled streets of Bel¬ 
grade. Throughout the country the women do as much heavy work as 
the men, hoeing the crops and carrying burdens on their backs. 








BREAD LANDS OF THE DANUBE 


dends. There are other mills scattered throughout the 
basin of the Danube. In what was the old Hungary 
there are more than twenty thousand flour mills in opera¬ 
tion, most of which are small establishments, run by water 
power, and supplying local markets. 


CHAPTER XX 


BELGRADE 


OR the third time I am in Belgrade. I visited 



the city thirty-five years ago when I went 


around the world from east to west on a honey- 


moon tour, and I stopped here again twenty 
years later with my wife and daughter on my second tour 
around the globe. In both of these trips 1 came from 
Constantinople. This time 1 have come from the north, 
riding nine hours on the train from Budapest to this capital 
of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, or, as 
it is generally called, Yugoslavia. 

When I was here last, Belgrade was a dead town of 
sixty or seventy thousand people. It was a kind of 
second-class opera-bouffe show, the capital of the little 
kingdom of Serbia, which was always quarrelling with its 
neighbours, the Austro-Hungarians and the Turks. 

The Kingdom was then independent, but to the west and 
the north lay the great Austro-Hungarian Empire, rich 
and powerful, aggressive and domineering. The latter 
rather despised Serbia and her capital, imposing all sorts 
of trade restrictions, hindering communications, and 
doing everything to throttle Belgrade and to exalt Buda¬ 
pest and Vienna. 

The Belgrade of to-day is alive and booming. It is 
the capital of a country eight times the size of Massa¬ 
chusetts, and of a people one tenth as numerous as we are. 


BELGRADE 


The city is being rejuvenated. It is now shuffling off 
its old clothes, ragged and soiled with the wear of al¬ 
most two thousand years, and putting on the frills of the 
modern capitals of Europe. I am writing this amid the 
din of new building. The sounds of the hammer and saw 
drown the click of my typewriter, and the rattle of the 
concrete mixer and the clattering stutter of the riveting 
machine fill the air. 

Belgrade is about halfway between Constantinople and 
Paris, sixty hours by fast train from London, and about 
the same time from Constantinople. It has always been a 
capital of some sort or other. It was a Celtic village as 
early as the third century before Christ, and was called 
Singidunum when the Romans took it and stationed a 
strong garrison here. It was a fastness of great impor¬ 
tance when the Turks overran southeastern Europe and 
made their way as far north as Vienna. About four 
hundred years ago it was captured by one of the sultans, 
and for centuries the people were under Turkish rule. It 
was less than fifty years ago that they became independent 
and made Belgrade their capital. Indeed, not until after 
the close of our Civil War did the Turks evacuate the 
stronghold on the rock where Danube and Save meet. 

The old fortifications still stand. They are huge works 
of brick and earth encircled by a wide moat. Back of 
them is a park, from the promenade of which I photo¬ 
graphed the citadel to show the shell holes made by the 
Austrians during the World War. 1 snapped my camera 
unthinkingly and for hours thereafter feared I might be 
tapped on the shoulder by one of the fierce Serbian police¬ 
men and put in jail as a spy. But perhaps no one saw me. 
At least, so far I am safe. On the high plateau behind 

153 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

the fortifications lay the old Belgrade, and it is there that 
the new Belgrade is building. 

Come for a drive through the capital. We shall take a 
two-horse carriage, for here taxis are almost unknown. 
The horses are spirited, and we hesitate when we look at 
the dashboard which has been kicked to pieces this morn¬ 
ing. However, the driver assures us that he can hold 
his pair in check, and we go bumping along over the holes 
in the wide streets, which are paved with wood blocks or 
cobbles. Now and then we strike a piece of asphalt or a 
stone roadway; everywhere the streets are in sad need of 
repair. Belgrade was torn to pieces during the war. It 
was bombarded by the Austrians from across the river, 
and outside the town one may see hundreds of great shell 
holes in the earth that have not yet been filled in. 

The poor streets will be improved as soon as the bud¬ 
get permits, but despite their bad condition modern build¬ 
ings are going up by the hundred along them. There are 
many carvings, and some of the buildings are most artistic. 
The old city was one of two and three stories. The new 
structures are five, six, and seven stories, for, as you know, 
skyscrapers are few in Europe. 

The plan is to put up twenty government buildings, 
eighteen public schools, an opera house, a museum, a 
library, and a university. The city authorities have 
decided to make Belgrade the most beautiful city of the 
Balkans, and have offered prizes for plans which shall pro¬ 
vide not only for the buildings mentioned, but for a great 
athletic field and a system of parks, a zoological and 
botanical garden, and four bridges across the Save and the 
Danube. The plans must include also drawings for a num¬ 
ber of churches, railway terminals, and harbour works. It 

154 


BELGRADE 

will, of course, take many years to complete such an am¬ 
bitious scheme. 

Private building of every sort is being helped by the 
government. It has made strikes illegal and admits all 
kinds of building materials tax free. New homes for 
workers and middle-class people are to pay no taxes for 
twenty-five years. Dwelling houses, regardless of size, are 
to be tax exempt for eighteen years, and for fifteen years 
there will be no levy on apartments and stores combined. 
It is also provided that the government cannot requisition 
such new buildings, and all the rent laws favour the land¬ 
lord rather than the tenant. The result of all these 
measures is such a building boom as I have seen nowhere 
else in my travels. 

I wish I could show our plasterers of Chicago, who are 
reported to be getting twenty dollars for eight hours’ 
labour, how the best men of their trade work in Belgrade. 
They are superior artisans, modelling in stucco and produc¬ 
ing creations far above those of the ordinary workmen. 
They are now receiving from eighty cents to one dollar a 
day. This is for the men at the top; other plasterers get 
less. The same wages are paid to carpenters, bricklayers, 
and machinists. Common labour receives from thirty to 
fifty cents a day, and the women who help at the building 
trades, mixing the mortar and fetching and carrying, get 
only twenty-five cents. 

In Yugoslavia the woman is to be seen at work every¬ 
where in city and country. She carries great loads on her 
back or shoulders, she digs and hoes in the fields. She 
rakes up and binds the sheaves of grain, which the men cut 
down with cradles, and she keeps the streets clean. I 
took a photograph to-day of a gang of street sweepers in 

155 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

front of the palace of the King. There were twenty girls 
with a man as the boss. Each had a broom of twigs, with 
which she scraped and brushed the dirt out from between 
the wooden paving blocks. The women wore picturesque 
costumes with a great deal of colour. I am told that they 
are gypsies and that they receive from fifteen to twenty 
cents a day. 

Some of the architecture of Belgrade shows the Turkish 
influence, but most of the buildings look much like those 
of the great European capitals. The Moscow Hotel has 
bands of green tiles around its various stories, and over the 
way is another large structure, which is faced with rose 
tiles. A bank that has just been completed has its wrought- 
iron doors plated with gold, and the new Franco-Serbian 
bank, upon which I have letters of credit, has a counting 
room finished in mahogany, with heavy brass mouldings at 
the base and edges of the counters. 

The people are proud of their new buildings. I was 
taken out to-day to see a new paper factory going up in 
the suburbs, which will give employment to several hun¬ 
dred workers. 11 is a large four-story structure and almost 
walled with glass. The proprietor told me that his 
machinery, which came from Germany, is the most up-to- 
date in the world. From what I saw I believe his story is 
true. The mill will make the finest of book and writing 
papers, bank notes, and tissue paper for cigarettes. The 
owner said he could turn out his product at one sixth 
the cost of its manufacture in America, and that he ex¬ 
pected a big trade with Europe and Latin America, as 
well as most of the business of Serbia. 

I am stopping at a new hotel here, which claims to be the 
last word in hotel accommodations in the Balkans. It has 
156 


BELGRADE 


a roof garden with an elevator that runs up but not down 
and a cabaret, where one can wine and dine from nine in 
the evening until five o’clock in the morning. 

The population of Belgrade has nearly doubled since 
the World War. The city had something like ninety 
thousand in 1914. It has nearly two hundred thousand at 
present and promises to grow right along. Before the war 
Belgrade, as the capital of Serbia, a kingdom of about the 
size of Indiana, had a population of only some four mil¬ 
lions to draw from. Now it is the capital of a land more 
than twice as large as the state of New York, with a popu¬ 
lation exceeding twelve millions. 

The people are made up of half-a-dozen races. The 
men I see on the streets of Belgrade come from all parts of 
the kingdom, though most of them are Serbs, big-boned, 
straight, and well-built, with dark, serious faces and fea¬ 
tures somewhat like those of the Russians. The women 
are tall and fine-looking and both men and women walk 
with a swing. The Serbs are most independent and they 
seem bound to make their way in building up the new 
principality. 

Then there are the Slovenes and the Croats, who, as a 
rule, are better dressed than their cousins, the Serbs. 
There are the Montenegrins, whom you may know by their 
pill-box caps, bordered with black, which have crowns of 
bright red embroidered with four golden stripes. They 
wear short jackets and very full trousers tied in at the 
ankles and upheld by a great belt or sash at the waist. 
There are many Moslems from Bosnia, in red fezzes, 
embroidered jackets, and the full pantaloons of the Turks. 
There are Russian refugees wearing their shirts outside 
their trousers, and the high hat of the Cossacks on their 

157 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

heads. There are also priests of the Greek Orthodox 
Church, in great hats, with gowns that reach from their 
necks to their feet, and wide sashes of red silk showing un¬ 
derneath. Most of them have long beards and long hair. 

There are also the Serbian peasants in homespun, often 
of the brightest of colours. They wear short jackets, and 
trousers tied tight around the ankles. Their feet are clad 
in shoes made of straps fastened to the soles, which are 
turned up at the front. The women are dressed even more 
Quaintly than the men, and the whole makes a perpetual 
moving-picture show worth coming far to see. Besides 
these picturesque figures, there is that large part of the 
population that looks just as we do. As a matter of fact, 
the upper classes of all nations now dress about the same 
the world over. 

The best time to see the crowd is from five until nine 
in the evening and the best place is on Czaritsa Street. 
This is a part of the main thoroughfare of the city. The 
roadway, which is paved with wooden blocks laid by Rus¬ 
sian workmen, was a present from the Czar Nicholas, after 
whom it is named. It is a good promenade with wide 
sidewalks walled with fine stores. At five o’clock the 
traffic policemen, some of whom are armed with muskets, 
shut off all carriages and cars, and the people fill the street 
just as they do in the Calle Florida in Buenos Aires, and in 
the Ouvidor, in Rio de Janeiro. The women wear their 
fine clothes. Nearly all have bare arms and necks, and 
the throng is a gay one. In contrast to the promenaders of 
other cities, these people do not loiter or stroll. They 
walk as though they were going somewhere, and their 
movements have a determination and a spring I have not 
seen elsewhere. 


58 



Freed from fear of Austria-Hungary, the capital of Yugoslavia has 
rapidly transformed itself into a modern city, which its people hope 
will fall heir to much of the commercial prosperity of Vienna and Budapest. 










Situated at the junction of the Save River with the Danube, Belgrade 
has always been a strategic point in the wars of southeastern Europe, 
The Romans built forts here and the Turks held it four hundred years. 



Austria’s former naval base, Cattaro, which has one of the finest 
natural harbours in the world, now belongs to Yugoslavia, and is regarded 
as an important asset in her future development. 







BELGRADE 


Here and there along this promenade, and in fact on all 
the streets of Belgrade, are cafes, which overflow to the 
sidewalks. There are tables covered with white cloths 
out in the street, with men and women and children sitting 
round them, drinking, chatting, and reading the news¬ 
papers. Some write letters, and others may play cards 
or dominoes. The cafes are to a large extent the clubs 
and loafing places where the people come to meet one 
another and talk business or gossip. Scores of peddlers 
walk in and out among the tables selling all sorts of trin¬ 
kets. There are beggars who get alms from almost 
everyone they ask, and there are men and women crying 
the newspapers. The Serbian newsgirl has a stentorian 
voice and shouts the sensational news while she pokes 
under your nose one of those sheets printed in Greek 
characters, which, although I studied the language six 
years, 1 can now hardly name. 

1 have met a number of the newspaper men of Belgrade. 
They are bright fellows, many of them speaking several 
languages. Two of the men 1 have talked with are gradu¬ 
ates of Oxford and a third studied at Cambridge. Nearly 
every reporter speaks German or French, as well as most 
of the tongues of this polyglot nation. They tell me the 
circulations of the newspapers are not large, the leading 
journal in Belgrade having only about twenty thousand 
per day. There are small sheets scattered all over the 
country, and many party organs and periodicals of one 
kind and another. The wages of newspaper men are low; 
the best writers get from ten to twelve dollars a week and 
the ordinary reporter much less. 

One of the lowest-paid men on each journal is the jail 
editor, who assumes all responsibility for anything that 

159 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

appears in his paper. Even in the case of a signed article, 
if the man who wrote it denies that he did so, the jail 
editor will affirm that the work was his own, and when 
the government orders his punishment, he goes to jail 
without question. After serving his term, he is taken 
back on the staff, to await the next offence. He receives 
a salary of about ten dollars a month, with a bonus after 
he comes out of jail in proportion to the length of his stay. 


CHAPTER XXI 


THE KINGDOM OF THE SERBS, CROATS, AND SLOVENES 

C us jump into a car and drive through the country 
near Belgrade to the top of Mt. Avala. Some 
people would call it a hill, but it rises perhaps 
a thousand feet over the plains and it will give us 
a view of a region like most of the land between here and 
the mountains. 

We bump over the rough roads, passing long-horned 
white cattle and fat sheep and hogs, and ride through 
little farms where men and women are working. Entering 
a pine wood, we go ''in second'' round and round up the 
steep slopes of Mt. Avala till we come out into the open 
beside a great stone cross surmounting a pyramid of gran¬ 
ite. This is the memorial of the people to the Unknown 
Dead of the World War. While the pine trees whisper a 
requiem we sit down by the monument and look out over 
the country. The view embraces many miles, with a moun¬ 
tain here and there in the distance. There are signs of 
earth washing and the whole region reminds me of the 
Piedmont section of the Carolinas. The land is gently 
rolling. It is all hill and hollow, but the hills are covered 
with woods and the green patches of grass run in and out 
between thousands of small sheets of yellow wheat, rye, 
barley, and oats, and fields of green corn. Here and there 
is a village, its specks of houses shining white dots in the 
orchards about them. That streak of silver off to the west 

i6i 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

is the Save River. It is navigable for a long distance, and 
flows into the Danube at Belgrade. 

How small the fields are! Many of them are not more 
than one or two acres. There are no great estates in 
this part of the country. Old Serbia, on which we are 
looking, was a great peasant democracy, made up of small 
landholders, each of whom owned his farm. In some sec¬ 
tions nine out of every ten men have some land. As a 
result, the tracts are so small that but little farm ma¬ 
chinery is used. On our way to the mountain, we saw 
men cradling the grain and women binding it by hand. 
The ploughs were rude and the draft animals were oxen. 

It is different in the lands taken from Austria-Hungary, 
which were held largely by the rich and the nobles. In 
those sections of what is now Yugoslavia, hardly a third 
of the people owned enough land to maintain a family. 
They worked for the rich farmers by the day or became 
tenants, cultivating the soil for a third or fourth of the 
produce raised. These great tracts have been taken over 
by the government and are being subdivided under the 
land-reform laws. They are in excellent condition and 
many of them have been farmed with tractors and the 
most up-to-date machinery. It remains to be seen 
whether they will yield as much in the hands of small 
farmers. 

But to understand this kingdom made of pieces of 
old Austria and Hungary added to Serbia and Montenegro, 
you must know something of the peoples that inhabit it. 
Their ancestors lived on the northern slopes of the Car¬ 
pathian Mountains, between the Black and Caspian seas. 
A little after the birth of Mohammed and while his follow¬ 
ers were taking Jerusalem and Constantinople, these Car- 
162 


SERBS, CROATS, AND SLOVENES 

pathian tribes established themselves in the valley of the 
Danube. 

The newcomers were of the great Slavic family to 
which the Russians, the Poles, the Czechs, and the Bul¬ 
garians belong. The name, Yugoslavia, means “Land of 
the South Slavs,'’ and most of its twelve million people 
are Slavs. About forty per cent, are Serbs, thirty per 
cent, are Croats, and perhaps ten per cent, are Slovenes. 
The rest of the population is made up of Magyars, Ger¬ 
mans, Rumanians, Albanians, and others. 

In the early migrations the Serbs settled between the 
Danube and the Drina. When the great Turkish invasion 
swept over the land the Serbs were conquered and had to 
submit to the rule of the Moslems for more than four 
hundred years. Yet all this time they kept their tradi¬ 
tions. They fought against their masters again and again, 
so that when the Turks were finally driven back, the Serbs 
had developed the sturdy, indomitable character that 
makes them the strongest element in the new nation. 
They have stuck to their own language, still using the 
Greek characters common in Russia. They belong to the 
Greek Orthodox Church and have many of the traits of 
the Russians. 

The Slovenes and the Croats drifted northward and 
westward. They made their way to the borders of 
Austria and Hungary and spread out over much of the 
land to the south along the Adriatic Sea. Thus they 
came under the influence of the Austrians and the Hun¬ 
garians. Most of them were converted to Roman 
Catholicism, the faith to which they still belong. They 
were affected by the civilization of the West rather than 
that of the East and adopted the Latin alphabet. In the 
163 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

new Kingdom a number of the papers are printed in both 
Latin and Greek letters, the words being the same. This 
is also true of the official record of the new Parliament 
and of many of the public documents. 

These two streams of culture do not mingle well. The 
Serbs think more like the Russians, while the Croats and 
the Slovenes, although they are cousins to the Serbs, think 
more like the Latins. The Croats and the Slovenes rather 
despise the Serbs for their roughness, and the Serbs look 
upon the others as weaklings on the way to degeneration. 

The Croats and the Slovenes are afraid of the domina¬ 
tion of the Serbs. They would like to have states' rights 
and maintain only a rather loose allegiance to the nation 
except in case of war and a few other international mat¬ 
ters. The Serbs believe in spelling the word ‘"nation" with 
a big “N," and in the centralization of power. Under 
the leadership of Nikola Pashitch, their “Grand Old 
Man," the Serbs gained the ascendancy and they seem 
likely to make the country a constitutional monarchy as 
democratic as England. 

Raditch, the leader of the Croats, is a demagogue and 
trouble maker, who reminds me somewhat of “Blue 
Jeans" Williams, “Sockless" Simpson, and others of our 
pot-house politicians. Raditch is educated and a writer 
of poetry, but he so plays on the feelings of the Croatian 
peasants that he has their seventy members of Parliament 
in the hollow of his hand. He told the peasants if they 
voted his way they would be obliged neither to pay taxes 
nor to go to war and that his election would bring the 
millennium. He has a considerable following among the 
educated Croats and Slovenes, who feel as he does, 
although they do not approve of his demagoguery. 

164 


SERBS, CROATS, AND SLOVENES 

I have found the Parliament of Yugoslavia more inter¬ 
esting than were any of the other Congresses I have re¬ 
cently visited. It has but one house, known as the 
Narodna Skupstina, or National Assembly, which contains 
three hundred and thirteen members. The King sum¬ 
mons it and has the right to dissolve it. Elections are 
held every four years. Besides the Radical party now 
in power, the Assembly has representatives of the Social¬ 
ists, the Croatian Agrarian party, the Serb Agrarians, the 
Mohammedans, the Catholic Peoples’ party, and other 
political organizations. The number of parties gives a 
hint of the somewhat unsettled condition of the country. 

I visited the National Assembly, and watched it at 
work. It was a polyglot crowd. There were perhaps two 
hundred members present, dressed in all sorts of costumes. 
Many of them wore the peasant’s homespun. Others had 
on the clothes of the western business man and looked not 
unlike our Congressmen in Washington. There were per¬ 
haps a dozen Greek Orthodox priests in their long gown¬ 
like coats. The Mohammedan members had red fezzes on 
their heads and looked just like Turks. I saw one with a 
green turban, the sign that he had been to Mecca. The 
tall Montenegrins wore blue jackets and baggy trousers. 
The speaker sat high above the members, with a portrait of 
the King behind him and an oriental rug over his desk, 
while below at the right and left sat the Cabinet Ministers. 

I was especially interested in the voting. According 
to Yugoslavia’s law, this is done by secret ballot on 
every bill. As the clerk called the roll each member 
dropped his ballot in a box. Afterward the boxes were 
carried to the clerk’s desk where the ballots were taken 
out and counted. One representative of each of the politi- 
165 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

cal parties, making almost a dozen men in all, came up 
and watched the tellers to see that there was no cheating. 
When the vote was declared there was great applause. The 
speeches I heard were in the Serbian language and the 
speakers shouted and tore the air just as they do in 
democratic assemblies everywhere. 

One of the bills the members were talking about con¬ 
cerned the building of a new railway and I heard the word 
“Amerikansky’' again and again in the discussion. Plans 
have been made to connect Belgrade, the capital, with 
Cattaro on the Adriatic. The length of the trunk line 
will be about three hundred and eighty miles, but other 
projects connected with the scheme will bring the total 
to more than thirteen hundred miles and it will take some 
years to complete the project. A concession for these 
roads has been given an American syndicate, which has 
engaged to lend Yugoslavia the sum of one hundred 
million dollars for these and other improvements, and as 
usual in such cases, the arrangement is the subject of 
almost continual discussion. 

The new railway is important to the country politically 
and economically. At present Yugoslavia has no rail 
outlet to the sea entirely within her own territory. Her 
trunk lines were all built with a view to benefiting Austria 
and Hungary rather than Serbia. One road starts at 
Fiume, which is Italian, and another at Trieste, also a 
seaport of Italy, while a third, which gives Yugoslavia 
egress to the Mediterranean at Salonica, runs for about 
fifty-five miles through Greece. 

The road will be all Yugoslavian. The main line 
will start at one of the finest harbours of the Adriatic 
and wind over the mountains, following the valleys of 
166 



Night and day, sentries stand guard at the gates of the royal palace in 
Belgrade, which in the past has been the scene of the murder of more than 
one ruler of the Serbs. 




















Only a foolhardy American would sample the wares of the ice-cream 
and soft-drink peddlers of Belgrade, but germs have few terrors for the 
peasants in for market day and the excitements of the city. 




SERBS, CROATS, AND SLOVENES 

two rivers, the Drina and Save, on the way to Belgrade. 
It will cross the mountains at an altitude of about three 
thousand feet. Branch lines will be built north and south, 
and it is intended to bridge the Danube at Belgrade and 
extend the railway through the rich Banat grain section 
to connect with the Rumanian system. At Belgrade the 
line will join the trunk railway from Paris to Constanti¬ 
nople. Another possibility is the extension of a branch line 
from Cattaro across southern Serbia to Bulgaria and on 
into south Russia. This was a part of a plan originated by 
the Russians long before the World War. 

No wonder the Yugoslavs are interested in these railway 
projects. They mean the binding of their nation into a 
political unit and the consequent reduction of the army 
through greater facilities for moving troops quickly. 
But, more important still, these railroads are essential 
to the economic development of the Kingdom, which, in 
grain, minerals, and other resources, is one of the richest of 
all the states of central Europe. 


167 


CHAPTER XXII 


PEASANT MAIDS AND PATCHWORK FARMS 

T his morning we have left the blazing white cap¬ 
ital of Yugoslavia, have driven past the trenches 
where the Serbians lay when Belgrade was bom¬ 
barded, and are now out in the country. Auto¬ 
mobiles are few and the horses and the oxen pulling 
the rude farm carts of the country grow frightened and 
jump this way and that as we pass by. An occasional 
motor truck crowds us almost off the roadway, and now 
and then a lot of building material on its way to make the 
new Serbia brings us to a stop. For instance, the steel 
rails for the railroad under construction near Belgrade 
are being hauled over these rough, narrow roads by oxen. 
The load for each team consists of three rails weighing 
seventy pounds to the yard laid on the trucks of a farm 
wagon, the fore and the hind wheels of which are perhaps 
thirty feet apart. 

The peasants tramping along move slowly out of our 
way. They are queer-looking people, sturdy and stolid, 
independent and self-reliant. They are dressed rn home- 
spun and both men and women wear the brightest colours. 
A man may have a jacket under which shows a vest of 
red, yellow, and blue, woven in stripes or patterns, and his 
stockings of brown are sometimes a mass of embroidery. 
The women wear different coloured cloths about their 
heads and often have on long white coats decorated with 

i68 


PEASANT MAIDS AND PATCHWORK FARMS 


gay colours and peppered with tinsel spangles. Their 
skirts are striped in bright red, blue, and other colours, 
and below them show substantial legs encased in red 
stockings embroidered like those of the men. Both men 
and women wear opantsis, home-made shoes with boot-like 
soles turning up at the toes, and bound on with straps 
weaving round the legs halfway to the knees. This 
footgear seems very comfortable. The more picturesque 
crowds are generally made up of village groups on their 
way to the city; for the people wear less striking clothing 
at their farm work. 

As we ride we take notes of the farms, stopping now and 
then to watch a gang of women and men at work in the 
fields or to make snapshots of the boat-like, home-made 
farm vehicles, as they jolt over the roads. 

This agricultural area is different from that of Hungary, 
with its huge estates and its tiny, ribbon-like farms. Here 
in Serbia most of the farms are mere garden patches. Some 
are squares, others triangles, and now and then a wide band 
of land surrounds a square that belongs to another owner. 
Sometimes the patches will form curves as they follow the 
slope of a hill. The whole reminds one of a picture puzzle. 

At present eighty-five per cent, of the population of the 
kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes is engaged in 
farming, stockbreeding, and fruit growing. The people 
pride themselves on belonging to the land. Nearly every 
family is a landholder and a man will do anything rather 
than part with his farm. The homestead law provides 
that even if a man becomes bankrupt, he can retain, debt- 
free, five acres, a pair of oxen, a plough, and his agricultural 
tools. Another statute that helps the small farmer is an 
old law requiring every land owner to contribute a part of 
169 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

his corn or wheat to a municipal store, from which supplies 
are lent to the peasants if they need grain for the next 
planting. A third helpful institution is the village custom 
of turning out in a body to aid the poor man in cutting his 
corn and bringing in his harvest. 

Yugoslavia claims to be first on the continent in raising 
corn, fifth in growing wheat, and ninth in its crops of rye. 
It is next to the United States in the production of corn, 
and ranks seventh among the lands of the world in oats, 
tenth in barley, and ninth in potatoes. It produces also 
beet sugar, raw silk, and tobacco. 

The lands along the Adriatic have almost as many vine¬ 
yards as those of the Rhine. There are orchards every¬ 
where yielding apples, pears, peaches, and plums. It is the 
paradise of Little Jack Horner, for there are more than 
twenty plum trees for every family in the Kingdom, and 
the average yield of each tree is about thirty pounds. 

I have looked at some of the fruit in the markets of 
Belgrade. It is abundant and of every variety, but it is 
speckled and spotted and shows evidence of lack of spray¬ 
ing and scientific culture. The new government is trying to 
improve this condition, and has established experimental 
farms and faculties for agriculture at the universities at 
Zagreb and Belgrade, and there are also three agricultural 
colleges and nine agricultural schools. 

Since there are no fences in Serbia the stock grazing 
in the fields has to be watched. In our motor trip we see 
cow-maids, sheep-maids, and even pig-maids herding two 
or three animals on small patches of grass surrounded by 
grain. Some of the stock feeds on the stubble of the grain 
fields, not daring to touch the unthreshed shocks of wheat, 
rye, barley, or oats under their noses. Much of the herding 
170 


PEASANT MAIDS AND PATCHWORK FARMS 

is done by old women or very young children. I have 
taken many pictures of the little ones watching the flocks. 

The villages here are different from those of the Euro¬ 
pean countries I have recently visited. Most of the 
towns of Germany, Switzerland, France, and the other 
lands of northern Europe consist of houses close to the 
streets without large yards or gardens. Here the villages 
are made up of little enclosures, each containing its own 
group of buildings with fruit trees and gardens about 
them. The typical holding contains a hut, a hay stack, 
a banked-over, cave-like cellar, and a granary. The 
houses are mean, as a rule. Each village has its school 
house, and in one that I visited last week I found a teacher 
writing the text of a French lesson on a blackboard for a 
half-dozen barefooted boys and girls. 

The percentage of literacy throughout the kingdom is 
small. In the old Kingdom of Serbia, in Montenegro, and 
in the parts of the country that did not belong to the 
Austro-Hungarian Empire, a large proportion of the 
people cannot read and write. But new schools are being 
started, and the government has a big educational pro¬ 
gramme. The Minister of Foreign Affairs tells me that 
since the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was formed the college 
students have increased in number from two thousand to 
twelve thousand, and that universities at Belgrade, Zagreb, 
and Ljubliana are all thriving. The University of Belgrade 
has about eight thousand students, whereas before the 
war it had only fifteen hundred. The Zagreb University 
has more than three thousand and the one at Ljubliana 
has about one thousand. The latter did not even exist 
before 1920. In the parts of Yugoslavia taken from 
Austria-Hungary the educational facilities are better than 
171 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

in the old Serbia. The Austrians established many public 
schools and all kinds of academies and colleges. Under 
their regime the young men went to Budapest or Vienna 
for their higher education. It is hoped they will now come 
to Belgrade. 

The Hungarians are better farmers than the Serbs, the 
Croats, or the Slovenes, and the parts of the new kingdom 
taken from Hungary are much better tilled than the lands 
through which I have recently motored. The great con¬ 
trast is seen as soon as one crosses the Save River. In old 
Serbia the division of the land into small tracts makes the 
use of agricultural machinery less practicable than where 
the farms are bigger. The yield of grain is lower than in 
the areas belonging to Hungary, and the rolling nature of 
the region makes for greater waste. Here and there are 
signs of earth-washing, which might be controlled by more 
scientific cultivation. 

Some of the best lands of Hungary were given to Serbia, 
and there is no richer tract in the world than that along 
the Danube between the new frontier and Belgrade. The 
moment I went over the new boundary line on the train, 

1 could see a difference in prosperity. In the present 
Hungary there are but few new buildings. That 
land was ruined by the war and by the fall of exchange. 
It has no money for repairs and the towns and the cities 
are shabby. But crossing into Yugoslavia, I noticed the 
red tiles of new roofs standing out everywhere on the 
landscape. There was more activity about the stations. 
There were new cars on the railways, and the locomotives 
seemed to burn better coal. At every crossroads wagons 
loaded with hogs, hay, or grain were waiting for the train 
to pass, and the shocks of wheat and oats peppering 
172 


PEASANT MAIDS AND PATCHWORK FARMS 

the landscape showed the natural wealth of the new 
Kingdom. 

There is current throughout the valley of the Danube a 
superstition that the harvest will not prosper unless the 
sheaves are shocked in the form of a cross. Accordingly, 
they are not stood on end and capped as with us, but are 
stacked up so that every pile is an emblem of the crucifix 
on which our Saviour died. The heads of the sheaves come 
together at the centre, meeting there in four piles, three 
sheaves to each pile, and making a perfect Greek cross. 
Rye, oats, and barley are shocked in the same way. In 
Hungary the population is Roman Catholic, and the shocks 
there seem to me to look more like the Roman cross. 

In Yugoslavia we also saw more and more livestock. 
It was strange to see hogs that grew wool, but I saw several 
droves of these animals with such curly hair that, were it 
not for their noses, they might have been sheep. Their 
tails were, however, more like those of horses, having 
long curling hairs so numerous that one would make a good 
fly brush. The breed is one well known here and it might 
be a good thing to introduce it into America. 


^73 


CHAPTER XXIII 


ATHENS 

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! 

Where burning Sappho loved and sung. 

Where grew the arts of war and peace. 

Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung! 

— Byron. 

I HAVE come from Yugoslavia to Greece, going over 
the railroad to Salonica, where the Yugoslavs have 
been granted the use of the port for the next fifty 
years. There I took a Greek steamer and made my 
way through the /Tgean Sea and its many islands to the 
harbour of the Piraeus. 1 motored the five miles from the 
sea to Athens over a road as fine as any in Massachusetts. 
As I write I can look over the ancient city that Milton 
describes as 

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts and eloquence. 

Athens is still the eye of Greece. During my stay I 
have visited the Parliament House, and it is still the 
mother of eloquence. As to art, the new Athens has many 
magnificent buildings made of the marble of Mount Pentel- 
icus just as were the Parthenon, the Temple of Jupiter, 
the Temple of Theseus, and other famous ruins. The 
modern city is built of marble. Some of the sidewalks 
are paved with it, and the great Stadium, which stands 
on the site of the ancient Stadion of more than three 

174 



The Serbs are an independent and self-reliant people. The bulk of 
them live on the land and almost every peasant cultivates his own freehold 
in about the same manner as did his fathers before him. 






The mighty rock of the Acropolis, rising more than two hundred feet 
above the plain of Athens, is crowned with the ruins of the temples that 
won for the city the name of “Mother of the Arts.” 




ATHENS 

hundred years before Christ, is of the same beautiful 
Stone. 

The city is thus wrapped in the glamour of the historic 
past. Yet it has all the spirit and enterprise of the liv¬ 
ing present. Under the rule of the Turks it dwindled to a 
shabby town of ten thousand or so. As soon as the Greeks 
gained their independence it began to grow, and when I 
first visited it, about forty years ago, it had one hundred 
thousand inhabitants. Twenty years later, when I saw it 
once more, that population had doubled, and to-day it has 
almost doubled again. At the present rate of progress it 
will soon have one million, and it is already larger than 
was old Athens in the height of its glory. It is well- 
built, with wide asphalt streets and every modern improve¬ 
ment. One can now ride in a taxi over the ground that 
Alcibiades traversed in his seven-horse chariot, and an 
electric trolley will carry you in the footsteps of Demos¬ 
thenes. The whistle of the locomotive bringing in the 
train from Thebes and Corinth reverberates against the 
time-coloured marble pillars of the Parthenon, which com-^ 
mands the city as it did nearly twenty-five hundred years 
ago in the golden age of Pericles. 

Athens is partly on and partly off the site of the ancient 
city. It is on the edge of a plain with the Acropolis ris¬ 
ing upward sheer two hundred feet at its back and the low 
mountain of Hymettus at one side. Near this are other 
mountains and across the plain are the blue waters of the 
Mediterranean. From the Acropolis one can see the 
plains of Marathon where the Greeks under Miltiades de¬ 
feated the Persian hosts, and away to the west lies the Bay 
of Salamis where Xerxes, the Persian King, watched his 
thousand war vessels being destroyed by the Greek fleet. 

175 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

Only a stone's throw from the Acropolis is Mars' Hill, 
which hangs out like a cliflF, forming a pulpit. There 
stood St. Paul and declared the religion of the Unknown 
God, and it was there that the Court of the Areopagus 
tried and convicted Demosthenes for bribery. The 
poppy flowers mixed with the wheat are of the same blood- 
red as when Plato sat among them and taught philosophy, 
and the dark hemlock of the hills is as green as when it 
furnished the poison for the fatal cup of Socrates. The 
wild thyme on the rocky, silver-gray sides of Mt. Hymettus 
furnishes as sweet honey to-day as when the Greek poets 
sang its praises, and the marble of the modern sculptor 
is almost identical with that from which Phidias and 
Praxiteles wrought their glorious statues. 

There is no better place to study old Greece than right 
here in Athens. One imbibes the spirit of the ancients 
in tramping over the hills where they lived. One sees 
their wonderful works in the museums, meets with their 
portraits in the statues, and from the ruins scattered al¬ 
most everywhere rebuilds the famed structures of the past. 

Take the Parthenon, the remains of which lie on the 
Acropolis, on the very edge of modern Athens. It was 
built upon a solid rock of pink marble, that forms a plateau 
of about ten or fifteen acres. This space is now covered 
with ruins, but a large portion of the great edifice still 
stands. I went over it to-day and made photographs 
of some of the columns, discovering queer things about 
its construction. One is that the building was partly a 
graft. The columns on the outside are of excellent marble, 
and they stand well to-day. Those within another part, 
which could not be seen, were backed with inferior stone, 
and the marble there is now rotting away. 

176 


ATHENS 

I wish I could show you the Parthenon. Everyone has 
read of it, but, without seeing it, none can possibly compre¬ 
hend just how wonderful it is. Imagine a forest of marble 
columns rising from a marble floor nearly an acre in area. 
Let each column have the diameter of a cartwheel and 
let it rise to the height of a three-story house in the most 
symmetrical form of artistic beauty. Let it be fluted and 
let the capitals, rich in their plain Doric grace, uphold a 
wall of marble adorned with a frieze of exquisite carvings, 
and you have the skeleton of the building. The in¬ 
terior contains other columns that support the roof, and 
the whole forms a temple that was regarded as the most 
beautiful of the known world. 

The Parthenon, what remains of it, is visible for miles 
around Athens. It is the first thing seen on approach¬ 
ing the Piraeus, and it stands out far above the plain upon 
which the city lies. A great part of the building has been 
carried away and its most beautiful carvings are in the 
British Museum. They were taken there many years ago 
by Lord Elgin, who got a permit from the Turkish Sultan 
authorizing him to ''remove a few blocks of stone from 
Athens to England.'' The cost of the transportation of 
those few blocks was one hundred and eighty thousand 
dollars, from which you can see that shiploads must have 
been carried away. 

This shrine to the Goddess Athene, or Minerva, was 
begun about twenty-four hundred years ago. Within it 
was the statue of the goddess made by Phidias. It was 
of gold and ivory and was forty-two and one half feet in 
height. It is supposed that the inner kernel of the figure 
was of wood, upon which the form of the Athene was 
modelled in some plastic material and that this in turn was 
177 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

covered with plates of ivory and gold. The ivory formed 
the nude portions of the figure, while the gold represented 
the garments. The value of the gold in the statue was 
about three quarters of a million dollars. There is a 
marble imitation of this statue in the National Museum 
at Athens. It is a pigmy, however, in comparison with 
the great statue of the Parthenon, being only three and 
one half feet in height. 

The Greeks of the present are intensely proud of the 
Greece of the past. They read the classics, and the lan¬ 
guage they speak is practically the same as that of Homer 
and Demosthenes. But these modern Greeks are even 
more vitally interested in the affairs of the day. Every 
one of them regards his country as the pivot upon which 
turns the Near East. They consider themselves a superior 
people and believe their nation destined for a great future. 
Indeed, they seem to think the world revolves about them. 
A popular poet of Cephalonia wrote: 

In the beginning, God created Cephalonia and the rest of the world. 

The people are natural politicians. Every boy thinks of 
himself as a statesman of the future and begins to talk 
politics before he is ready for shaving. He keeps it up 
all his life and a large part of every afternoon is spent by 
the men sitting about the cafe tables out in the streets, or 
in the parks, discussing the world situation and the part 
that Greece must have in it. 

Modern Greece is just about as large as the state of 
Ohio. It consists of a jagged peninsula stretching down 
into the Mediterranean, with the Ionian Sea on the 
west and the /Egean on the east. It has as many 
islands as the St. Lawrence between Lake Ontario and 
178 


ATHENS 


Montreal, and it is mountainous from one end to the other. 
The country lies in about the same latitude as our Atlantic 
coast between New York and North Carolina, and its cli¬ 
mate is much like that of southern California. 

It is bounded on the north by Albania, Yugoslavia, 
Bulgaria, and Turkey, and, in the words of Strabo, the 
Greek geographer who declared two thousand years ago 
that the earth is round: '‘The sea presses upon it at all 
parts with a thousand arms.’' Only about two fifths of 
the country can be cultivated. Much of it is so dry that 
it needs irrigation. There are but few minerals of impor¬ 
tance, but the waterfalls are being harnessed and manu¬ 
facturing is increasing. 

The Greeks are famous for their merchant marine. In 
the Piraeus and at Salonica you may see scores of their 
vessels which go to every port of the Mediterranean. For 
years the Piraeus was connected with Athens by two long 
walls which protected the passage between the city and the 
sea. Now the whole way is planted with trees, which 
shade the trolley line and overhang the boulevard built 
and given to the country by a wealthy citizen. 

This gift is characteristic of the public spirit of the 
modern Greeks. Every Greek who makes money wants 
to do something for his city or his country. The Stadion 
was restored by a Greek who made a fortune in business in 
Alexandria, and nearly all the public buildings of Athens 
were gifts from wealthy citizens. In this respect the 
Greeks are much like us, and in marked contrast with their 
former rulers, the Turks. The Turk cares nothing for his 
city and never gives anything for a public improvement. 

Nowadays Greece is the land of the rich. No country 
in the world has so large a proportion of wealthy men, 
179 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

though the masses of the people have little or nothing. 
Most of the rich Greeks make their money outside their 
own country, but after they have accumulated their for¬ 
tunes they love to return home and build themselves 
marble palaces and play the role of the philanthropist. In 
a single valley, I am told, there are forty estates, the owner 
of each of which is worth five million dollars or more. 

Before Turkey made herself a republic, the Greeks used 
to control most of the business of Constantinople. They 
had also built up at Smyrna one of the largest trading 
centres of the Mediterranean, and since the days of the 
Pharaohs they have formed the wealthiest class in Alexan¬ 
dria and Cairo. They have banking houses in every 
important city on the Mediterranean. As a people, they 
are shrewd traders, and it is a saying in this part of the 
world that it takes two Jews to beat a Greek in a deal, 
but two Greeks are hardly a match for one Armenian. 

We in America have abundant evidence of the way the 
Greeks take to trade and money-making, as they now 
run most of our boot-black establishments and own a large 
proportion of our fruit stores, lunchrooms, and cheap 
restaurants. The last time I was in Athens, hundreds of 
boys were being shipped to America under contract to 
owners of chains of shoe-shining shops in the United 
States. The wages of most of them came back to their 
parents in Greece, and remittances from Greeks in our 
country continue to form an important part of the income 
of the people here. Thousands of refugees from Asia 
Minor were sheltered in a town of hundreds of houses 
built with money raised by popular subscription among the 
Greeks in America. Through the operation of our quota 
law, only two or three thousand Greek immigrants are now 
i8o 


ATHENS 


admitted each year, but several times that number would 
like to get in. Nowadays, too, it is illegal for immigrants 
to come over under contract to employers to this country. 

Many of the Greeks who had gone to America were 
summoned home at the time of the World War. Thou¬ 
sands of others have returned here to spend the money 
gained in America, which conversion into drachmas at 
recent rates of exchange makes an impressive total of 
even a modest sum. 1 have met many of these semi- 
Americanized Greeks, who do not make me exactly proud 
of what my country has done for them. The other day 
I had a chauffeur who swears so much in the style he ac¬ 
quired in an Oregon lumber camp that he is known among 
his mates as ''Mr. Goddam.'' Every time he indulged in 
Anglo-Saxon profanity, he looked at me as if expecting 
admiration for his command of the language. 

The village of Megara, about forty miles from Athens, 
has two thousand people who have been in America. On 
the long main street is a cafe owned by a Greek who used 
to live in Seattle. He has adorned the walls with Ameri¬ 
can flags and pictures of himself at work in a shipyard, 
and proudly displays a number of Liberty bonds to every 
American he meets. There is another returned Greek 
there, now the owner of a big olive orchard, but once the 
president of a miners' union in Colorado. 

Although the Athenians think they knowall about every¬ 
thing, at the same time they are eager to get more educa¬ 
tion. They are also great newspaper readers. Everybody 
reads at least one newspaper every day, and each copy 
passes from hand to hand until it has been devoured by five 
or six people. There are fifteen dailies publishediin Athens, 
of which the largest has only fifteen thousand circulation. 

i8i 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

These sheets are mostly given up to politics. As in the 
days of St. Paul, the Athenians are always looking for 
some new thing, and are anxious to get excited about it. 

In the cities the great gossiping hour is just after sun¬ 
set. Crowds come out and settle down at the cafe 
tables. Here in Athens the centre of this sort of thing 
is in the square in front of the old palace, where an acre 
or more is covered with the tables of the four great cafes 
that occupy the corners. There one may see statesmen 
and politicians, officers and soldiers, young men and their 
sweethearts, and often whole families. Many of the peo¬ 
ple regularly spend the evening from six until nine at a cafe, 
then go home or to a restaurant for dinner, and come back 
for more coffee and talk until midnight or after. These 
crowds are made up of well-dressed, intelligent-looking 
people. They are also good natured; I am greeted every¬ 
where with smiles and have seen but few scowls. 

These modern Greeks pride themselves on belonging to 
the old Hellenic race, but as a matter of fact they are about 
as much of a mixture as we Americans. There are dark 
Greeks and fair Greeks; some with blue eyes and others 
with black. Only occasionally do I see one who seems to 
belong to the ancient type. Many of the young women 
have broad, low foreheads, straight noses, and chins and 
throats so beautifully rounded that they might have been 
carved by Praxiteles. The other day, at the Phaleron 
bathing beach, near the Piraeus, I saw some girls with 
second toes the same length as the first, which is a notable 
characteristic of many of the ancient Greek statues. 
Some of the Greeks look like Jews, which they may well 
be, for thousands of Hebrews came here when expelled 
from Spain the year after Columbus discovered America. 

182 



Imagine a forest of fluted columns rising from a marble floor, and 
upholding a wall of marble adorned with a frieze of exquisite carvings, and 
you will have an idea of the Parthenon, once the world’s most beautiful 
temple. 










The guards before the palace are dressed m the old Greek national 
costume, with full skirts, blue-tasselled fezzes, long white stockings, and 
red shoes with blue tufts on their turned-up toes. 






CHAPTER XXIV 


THE KINGS OF GREECE 

Kings are like stars^—they rise and set, they have 
The worship of the world, but no repose. 

T hese words of Shelley fit well the kings of 
Greece, and especially George 11 , with whom I had 
a talk while he was a star in the imperial constel¬ 
lation of Europe. To-day, by an act of parlia¬ 
ment confirmed by vote of the people, Greece is a republic, 
and George has been banished after a brief reign. ..He is 
living with his celebrated mother-in-law. Queen Marie of 
Rumania. The star of George H rose on September 27, 
1922, when he succeeded to the throne on the forced ab¬ 
dication of his father, Constantino I, who was elected after 
the assassination of his father, George I. His star is now 
behind the clouds, but whether it has really set remains for 
the politicians to decide. In Greece revolutions spring up 
like mushrooms, and another turn of Fortune’s wheel may 
give him back his throne. 

Greece was a kingdom for almost one hundred years. 
It won its independence from Turkey about the time 
Andrew Jackson was serving his first term as President 
of the United States. The first king was chosen through 
the guarantee of the three then greatest Powers, Great 
Britain, France, and Russia, and the man selected was 
Otto, the second son of the King of Bavaria. He came to 
183 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

the throne at the age of eighteen and reigned for twenty- 
nine years, before he was expelled by the people. That 
was when Abraham Lincoln was president and we were in 
the midst of the Civil War. Then the three Powers made 
another selection and guaranteed the throne to a son of 
the royal family of Denmark, which had long been breeding 
kings and queens for Europe. The man chosen was 
George 1 , the second son of the King of Denmark, and he 
reigned over Greece for more than fifty years. He was on 
the throne when 1 first visited Athens and I then had 
an interview with him in the royal palace, to which 1 
refer farther on in this chapter. I met him again here 
twenty years later, not long before he was assassinated at 
Salonica. 

King George 1 was succeeded by his son, Constantino, 
who reigned from 1913 to 1917, when he was deposed and 
his second son, Alexandros, was chosen. About three 
years later Alexandros died and Constantino was taken 
back, only to be expelled again in 1922. Constantino 
went to Switzerland where he soon died, and George 
II ascended the throne. It was during his brief rule that 
I talked with him here in Athens. 

My interviews with King George I took place in the 
old palace on Constitution Square. It is now occupied by 
the officials of the Near East Relief, the American organ¬ 
ization of which I hear nothing but praise in my travels 
in this part of the world. My audience with King George 11 
was in a new building erected in the old palace grounds, 
just in the rear of the former home of the king. It is an 
unostentatious but beautiful stone structure, surrounded 
by a great park, although it is right in the heart of the city. 
Soldiers in the ballet skirts of the ancient Greek uniform 
184 


THE KINGS OF GREECE 


stood at the gate and saluted as we went by. Entering, we 
came into a hall that would not be considered magnificent 
in any millionaire’s house in the States. A servant clad 
in a modest uniform took our hats and hung them up on 
a rack near the entrance. We walked alone up the white 
marble stairs to the main floor, and waited in a home¬ 
like parlour which had none of the stiffness of the usual 
waiting rooms of royalty. 

The palace has perhaps forty rooms. It is simply 
furnished, the paintings are modern, and some of the 
decorations would not be out of place in the country home 
of a well-to-do American. For instance, I noticed a centre 
table covered with an Indian cotton cloth such as might 
be bought for two dollars in any department store. The 
chairs had on summer suits of blue gingham, and the walls 
were kalsomined in light blue. A very ordinary electric 
chandelier hung from the ceiling. 

George II is simple in his tastes and always preferred 
his country home, known as ''Tatoi,” situated about 
twenty-five miles from Athens. The palace in the city is 
the property of the nation, but the estate of ''Tatoi” was 
bought by King George I, this young man’s grandfather, 
and was run as a farm as well as a royal place of residence. 
''Tatoi” has excellent soil, and George I had large vine¬ 
yards from which he made wine that found a ready market 
in Athens. The estate is not far from Marathon, where 
the invading Persians were defeated by the Athenians in 
490 B.C. There is a fairly good motor road from there to 
Athens, over which I understand Alexandros, who was 
King from 1917 to 1920, could make the trip to his palace 
here in twenty-five minutes. King Alexandros was fa¬ 
mous as a motorist. While a prince he was honorary 
185 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

president of the Chauffeurs' Union in Paris, and later was 
wont to drive down University Street in Athens at fifty 
miles an hour. He was democratic in his tastes, and 
considered the ''king job” a kind of amusement. You 
may remember that he died of blood poisoning caused by 
the bite of his pet monkey. 

But to return to the palace. I had waited but a short 
time when the High Court Chamberlain, a plainly dressed 
man, appeared and asked me to come with him. We 
walked together across the hall and entered the library 
where, at a desk, with photographs of his father, mother, 
and grandfather facing him, sat a young man of thirty- 
two. It was His Majesty, George H, King of Greece. 
He rose as I entered, the High Court Chamberlain in¬ 
troduced me, and His Majesty gave me a cordial shake of 
the hand, motioning me to a seat at his side. The presen¬ 
tation was about the same as that one would have to any 
business man, and the dress of the King struck the same 
note of simplicity. He wore a business suit of Scotch 
tweed, and his soft white collar was held tight to a black 
knit silk four-in-hand tie by a gold pin. I have a pin much 
like it that cost me three dollars. His shoes were of tan, 
and his only jewellery consisted of two rings on the fin¬ 
gers of his left hand. One of these was a gold wedding 
ring. 

As we talked I had a good chance to study the King. 
His appearance was pleasing. I saw a well-set-up, 
healthy young man about five feet eight inches tall. His 
features were strong, his hair was dark, and his eyes were 
as blue as the skies over his palace. He was cordial in 
his greeting and smiled as he talked. He had no man¬ 
nerisms whatsoever, and he impressed me as being modest 
186 


THE KINGS OF GREECE 


and forceful. Our conversation was in English, and His 
Majesty spoke without reserve. 

Among the subjects discussed were the difficulties of 
Greece in looking after the million odd refugees forced out 
of Smyrna and other parts of the old Turkish Empire. 
King George said he wanted to thank the United States 
for its aid in their care. He said Greece could eventually 
absorb all its refugees, and that their young blood would 
add much to the strength of the nation. 

I asked him about farming conditions. He replied that 
the crops of Greece could be greatly increased by intensive 
cultivation and more irrigation. The climate and the 
soil of this country, he said, are much like those of Cali¬ 
fornia. He referred to what the navel orange has done 
for southern California, saying that the Greeks had re¬ 
cently imported cuttings of that tree and were going to 
try them out in different parts of the country. 

In the course of our conversation I said: “Your Majesty, 
may I ask a personal question?'' 

“What is that?" he said. 

“I should like to have Your Majesty tell me frankly 
how you like your job." 

A look of disgust came over the face of the young mon¬ 
arch as he replied: 

“ I loathe it. 1 hate it. I despise it. I would like to be 
free from it, but how can I help it?" 

“It would not be hard, perhaps, to find someone who 
would change places with you," said I. 

“Let him come forth and I will give him the chance!" 
said the King. “How about yourself? I will give you 
my job and take yours, which seems to me much more 
interesting." 


187 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

It was shortly after this that the King lost his job and 
departed from Athens almost in tears. When I read the 
news, I was glad I still held my job. 

King George married Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of 
Queen Marie and King Ferdinand of Rumania. It was a 
love match. The two met in Switzerland, when he had 
no hope of ever becoming king; they fell in love, George 
popped the question, and Elizabeth said “Yes.'' Their 
marriage was simple and their wedded life now is as domes¬ 
tic and retired as that of our grandmothers and grand¬ 
fathers in the days of the Puritans. They love each other 
and there has never been a breath of scandal connected 
with either. 

I don't know how much money George 11 was able to 
lay by while he was King, but his grandfather, George I, 
was rich. Greece gave him two hundred and seventy 
thousand dollars a year, and in addition Russia, Great 
Britain, and France each paid him twenty thousand an¬ 
nually. From a royal standpoint, living in Greece was 
not expensive, and George I, who was an investor and a 
speculator, should have laid up a fortune in the fifty 
years of his reign. 

I met King George I when he was in his prime. He was 
the most democratic of monarchs, and this seems to have 
been a characteristic of the whole royal family. King 
George and Queen Olga—she was, you know, a niece of 
Alexander 11 , Emperor of Russia—were fond of strolling 
about Athens and stopping on the streets to chat with their 
friends. They liked the Americans and many of our prom¬ 
inent citizens were entertained at their family table. 

The King was accustomed to take trips through the 
country and talk with the farmers. On such occasions 

i88 


THE KINGS OF GREECE 


he wore no sign of his rank and had no trouble in getting 
opinions, for every Greek peasant has decided views as 
to how not only Athens but the whole world should be run. 

Greece was never a monarchy in the arbitrary or tyran¬ 
nical sense of the word. Its kings were mere figureheads 
and the people have ruled to a great extent. The Greek 
republics of ancient times were usually cities with a few 
dozen square miles of territory about them. The vote 
was limited to the free citizens, and these were so few 
that they could all be addressed in the open air. The 
republics of that time had no civil service, and there were 
no organized political parties. There was more graft then 
than there is now, and to take a bribe was hardly con¬ 
sidered disgraceful. Athens was full of demagogues, and 
most of them were willing to sell their souls for votes. 
Politics in Greece to-day are far less corrupt than they 
used to be. 

The country is now ruled, as it has been ever since it 
threw off the yoke of Turkey, by the National Parliament, 
called the Buie. This consists of but one chamber, to 
which members are elected by popular vote for the term 
of four years. The constitution also provides for a Coun¬ 
cil of State, which is something like our Senate, though 
it has much less power. The Buie has three hundred and 
sixty-nine members, divided just now among five parties. 
They get only eight hundred dollars a year, and are fined 
if they are absent from more than five sittings a month. 
All Greece is divided into departments, each of which is 
under a governor appointed by the ministry of Athens and 
sends representatives to the national assembly. 

On election days, each candidate has his own ballot 
box with his photograph on top, and he can be present and 
189 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

watch the proceedings if he wishes. All citizens whose 
names are on the voting list are handed as many buck¬ 
shot as there are places to be filled. The ballot boxes are 
divided into two compartments, a white one labelled “yes ” 
and a black one marked “no.'' The voter thrusts his arm 
through a hole in the top, so that no one can tell into which 
compartment he finally drops his shot. Wives of candi¬ 
dates often help their husbands in the campaign, and I 
have heard of one woman who won the vote of a whole 
village by distributing free tickets for a trip to Athens. 

The opening of Parliament is a great social event. The 
ministers attend in full evening dress, and the dignitaries 
of the Orthodox Church are present in their black robes 
and high hats. After the preliminaries are over, the 
Premier and the Archbishop go to a table in the centre of 
the hall, on which is a gold vessel filled with holy water. 
The Archbishop holds out a cross which the Premier 
kisses. The Archbishop dips an olive sprig in the water 
and strikes the Premier on the brow with it. The other 
ministers of state go through the same ceremony. 

The sessions of the Greek Parliament are often lively 
affairs, especially in the last few years when the country 
has had so many ups and downs with rapid changes of 
governments and kings. Violent speeches are not uncom¬ 
mon and sometimes lead to disorder within the Chamber 
itself, and may even result in members meeting outside 
to fight duels. 



There are twenty-five hundred years of Athens in this picture. The 
temples on the Acropolis were the product of classic times; the ruined 
arch marks the period of Roman domination, while the houses and the 
peddler are of the Athens of to-day. 
























Greek monasteries are required by law to entertain the traveller, a 
decree cheerfully obeyed by the monks, who are hospitable and kindly. 
While the monks are celibates, the parish priests of the Greek Catholic 
Church are allowed to marry. 










CHAPTER XXV 


MOTORING THROUGH THE LAND OF HOMER 

R iding over Greece one sees how slowly the old 
gives way to the new. Here and there on the 
large estates I have seen American tractors and 
' other farm machinery, and in the drained Lake 
Kopais district tobacco and cotton are now grown by 
scientific methods. In the smaller valleys, however, 
and almost everywhere in Greece, the soil is tilled as 
it was in the days of Homer. The same sort of plough 
is used as those carved on the temple frescoes, and the 
grain is still cut with the sickle and bound by hand. 
Threshing is done with flails and by driving horses and 
oxen over the grain. The women and children winnow 
it by throwing it into the air. Like many other countries 
of eastern Europe, Greece is cutting up her large estates 
in order to provide lands for the people, but these small 
farms are not so efficiently cultivated and the harvest is 
small. 

I find that this clinging to the old fashions lends a 
special enjoyment to journeys along the dusty highways of 
Greece. When I see the people at work with their crude 
ploughs and their ancient flails I think to myself that here 
are scenes exactly like those Hesiod had before him when 
he wrote his poems of the soil. During my drive by 
motor from Athens to Delphi every foot of the way 
reminded me of the Hellas of the past and of the names 
191 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

and deeds of the great ones that have come down to our 
day. 1 got some gasoline at Amphissa, where Philip H 
of Macedon stopped in his conquest of Greece, and we 
changed a tire in ancient Thebes, the home of Pindar, the 
poet. 

I asked at Thebes about Pindar, but the modern Greeks 
could not show me the site of his birthplace, and I looked 
in vain for any remains of the Sphinx or the Theban 
republic that vied with Sparta and Athens for suprem¬ 
acy in ancient Hellas. The Thebes of to-day has only 
a few thousand people. Under the great trees along 
the main street were piles of vegetables, baskets of 
grain, and other farm produce. The people work out 
in the street, and I saw cobblers pegging shoes in the 
shade. , 

The country surrounding Thebes has excellent soil and is 
a fair sample of what one finds in the plains and the valleys. 
1 had always imagined that Greece was all mountains, 
with farms, perhaps, in the wedge-shaped crevices where 
the hills came together. This and other trips have given 
me a different idea. There are many broad flat valleys, 
with here and there plains of considerable size. About 
one fifth of Greece is under cultivation and there are more 
than a million acres covered with olive groves and vine¬ 
yards. More land is devoted to wheat raising than to any 
other one crop, while one of the most valuable is tobacco, 
much of which goes into American cigarettes. Just now 
many of the tobacco fields are in the blossom. There are 
great white seed bolls on the tall stalks, and the people 
are picking off the fine leaves and hanging them up to 
dry. 

The chief tree one sees in motoring over the country 
192 


MOTORING THROUGH THE LAND OF HOMER 

is the olive. The trees live a long time, and the Greeks 
say: 

“ If you would plant for yourself only, set out grapevines; if you would 
plant for your children, choose the fig tree; but if you would plant for 
your great-grandchildren, the olive is the thing that will do.” 

There are thirty-three different varieties of olive trees, 
and of these, thirty grow well in Greece. 

In some seasons the oil output is twelve million gallons 
and the exports are sometimes worth three million dollars 
a year. The crop varies according to the soil and the 
season, and the man who gets two good crops out of five 
does well. 

I was once here during the harvest. It lasts for weeks, 
and the women and children do much of the work. On the 
island of Crete the olive harvest is the gayest time of the 
year, for the girls then have more freedom, and lovemaking 
thrives. Some of the olives are gathered green for pick¬ 
ling, but those used for oil are generally shaken or beaten 
from the branches, falling upon cloths laid under the trees. 
The workers are often paid in kind, about two sevenths of 
the oil going to them. 

I have seen many groves of these low, squatty trees. 
They looked ragged and gnarly, each having a rough 
silver trunk with a huge, wide-branching brush on the top. 
The trees are carefully trimmed and the ground around 
them is cultivated with the plough and the hoe. Some of 
the groves are irrigated. The leaves are pale green and, 
like all of the vegetation of this limestone land, are almost 
always covered with dust. 

The dust is characteristic of Greece. The same sort of 
limestone rock as that from which the ancient statues were 
193 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 


made crops out here and there all over the country. The 
roads are surfaced with this rock, which the traffic grinds 
up into a dust as fine as flour and of almost the same col¬ 
our. The trees become covered with it, and the grass and 
flowers are sprinkled with frosted silver. One's face soon 
looks like a miller's. Every hotel keeps a bootblack at 
the door to wipe off the shoes of new arrivals. The whole 
country has a dusty look, and every automobile raises a 
cloud that trails behind it like the smoke of a locomotive. 
Between May and September no rain falls, but in spring 
and fall the land blooms with flowers and remains green 
all winter. 

The roads of Greece are comparatively good, but they 
are so white and glaring in the bright sunlight that in 
motoring I always keep on my goggles, and so dusty that 
I wear the long linen duster common in our country when 
automobiles first came into use. Many of the highways 
show good engineering. They climb the mountains, zig¬ 
zagging this way and that in great loops, and afford fine 
views of the green olive groves and white villages in the 
valleys below. Some of them were made for military 
purposes and were trod by the armies of Alexander the 
Great and Philip of Macedon. 

Most of the ploughing is done by oxen, and the crops are 
usually carried from thefields on the backs of farm animals. 
As I rode across the basin of Lake Kopais I was stopped 
often by donkeys and mules laden with corn. Each had 
six corn shocks fastened to its sides by ropes over the 
back and around the belly, and as they walked they 
resembled a whole cornfield going off upon legs. In 
Greece, horses, donkeys, and mules have the place taken 
by women in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. The 
194 


MOTORING THROUGH THE LAND OF HOMER 

women here sometimes ride on the loads and sometimes 
walk behind, driving the animals before them. There are 
no geese such as I noticed in the lands of the Danube, but, 
instead, flocks of hundreds of little black goats scamper 
over the hillsides. 

I saw many of the homes of the farmers, who live in vil¬ 
lages strung along the roadside and go out into the fields to 
work. During the summer many of them sleep out of 
doors. Their houses are small and mean in comparison 
with the homes of the peasants of Germany or France, 
but under the bright summer skies they do not look so 
squalid as they would elsewhere. They are often wretched 
huts of stone or sun-dried brick, with the windows un¬ 
glazed, and no chimneys. The doors are of stone and fre¬ 
quently an open fire is used for cooking. The houses have 
little furniture and no modern conveniences, and the peo¬ 
ple make no attempt to brighten them with flowers or 
anything green. Clothes are usually washed at the 
streams, although in Thebes there are municipal washtubs 
of concrete, fed by cold water. The women stand out in 
the street as they launder their clothes. In the better 
cultivated parts of the country, where there are often two- 
story houses, the people sometimes live in the second story 
reached by a stairway from the outside, and use the ground 
floor as a stable. 

Many of the peasants spin and weave all the wool, flax, 
and cotton needed for their clothing. Although the looms 
are very primitive, the woolen and silk cloths made on 
them are often beautiful. In some parts of Greece the 
women use little hand cotton gins to separate the fibres 
from the seeds. They dye their cloth in bright colours 
and often spin it out in the courtyards or streets. 

195 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

Out in the country, goats’ milk cheese and dried olives 
largely take the place of meat. The people eat bread and 
vegetables, and they drink wine. Olive oil is used instead 
of butter. Beef is practically unknown to the farmers. 
Easter is the great Thanksgiving Day, when roast lamb 
is substituted for our turkey. One of the delicious dishes 
often served is pilaf, a stew of rice and chicken, sometimes 
with raisins mixed in. The country is as famous for its 
honey as in ancient times when that of Hymettus was 
prized throughout the classical world. All Greek honey 
has a fine flavour, supposed to come from the thyme which 
grows everywhere in this country. An American woman 
I have met here, who has made a fortune in bee-keeping 
in the United States, tells me there is no land upon earth 
that has so many honey flowers as Greece. She thinks 
this country might supply all Europe with honey if its 
apiaries were managed according to modern methods. As 
it is now, the hives are mere baskets plastered with mud, 
and the bees are smoked out when the honey is taken. 
Many are killed, and the comb is so crudely removed that 
most of the honey must be strained for the market. 

Greece is a land of fine fruits. It has oranges, lemons, 
and figs, and peaches as rosy as the Elbertas of Georgia. 
The melons would make a darky’s mouth water, and the 
white grapes are as large and delicious as those of Malaga. 
The chief money crop, however, is a grape the size of a 
marrowfat pea. It is so small that it is known as a currant. 
Indeed the word ‘‘currant” comes from “Corinth.” At 
the time of Christ the city was the main shipping point 
for these little grapes, which thus got the name of Corinth 
grapes or currant grapes. To-day the chief shipments are 
from Patras, a little port farther west. 

196 


MOTORING THROUGH THE LAND OF HOMER 


It is hard to estimate the richness of that part of Greece. 
The reddish brown soil shines like velvet under the rays of 
the sun. I rode for miles through vineyards of low vines 
which are cut back from year to year. In the winter they 
are nothing but stumps as thick as my leg and as high as 
my knee. They put out new sprouts every spring and in 
summer are one bed of green. In good seasons the yield 
is almost two hundred million tons. Of late it has been 
so great that the exporters have restricted production to 
keep up prices. Within the last year more than six thou¬ 
sand acres of vines were uprooted for this reason. 

The currant grape is seedless and as sweet as sugar. 
It is sold as a raisin, being used all over the world for cakes 
and puddings. In some years we take as much as twenty 
million pounds. The cultivation is carried on in sixty 
thousand vineyards by peasant proprietors who do all 
the work by hand. In January the roots of the vines are 
uncovered so that they can get air. In March, when the 
green shoots are about a foot long and the buds begin to 
appear on the stems, the soil is again levelled. After 
the blossoms have fallen, the bark is so cut that the sap 
does not run down the stem but goes into the fruit, increas¬ 
ing its size and quality. The grapes are gathered about 
the end of July, carried to the drying grounds, and spread 
out in the sun. After that they are picked from the 
stems, cleaned and sorted, and shipped to the markets. 
The business is profitable, good grape land often selling 
for five hundred dollars an acre. 

1 wish I could lift up a half-dozen Greek farmers by the 
napes of their necks and drop them down into the heart 
of St. Louis or Boston. In their Sunday dress one could 
hardly tell, except for their beards, whether they were 
197 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

women or men. They seem to be clad for the stage rather 
than for the field, and they might pose as ballet dancers. 
They wear knee breeches and leggings, above which are 
several short white skirts that stand out from the body 
like those of the lady bareback rider in the circus. A vest, 
richly embroidered, reaches to the waist, and a fez tops 
the outfit. The shoes are of red leather turned up at the 
toes like old-fashioned skates, and have fat red woollen 
tassels at the tips. 

The costumes of the Greek country women vary accord¬ 
ing to the locality. A common field dress is of linen 
homespun falling from the neck almost to the feet. Over 
this is worn a sleeveless sacque of white wool which reaches 
to the thighs. The headgear is a knit or felt cap of bright 
red, or perhaps a coloured handkerchief. 

The farm girls are uniformly straight, due, it may be, 
to the heavy burdens which they carry on their heads. 
They are intelligent, industrious, and thrifty, and they 
add to the earnings of the farm by their home industries. 
Every girl is expected to spin, weave, and embroider her 
own wedding gown, which has a linen skirt so loaded with 
silk that it may weigh a couple of pounds. 

In some parts of Greece the farmer’s daughter, when 
she is married, is supposed to bring a trousseau of at 
least three costumes. One is for everyday wear, one for 
Sundays, and the other for festivals. At the wedding, 
these and the rest of her dowry are borne to the church on 
the back of a mule. As the married couple leave the 
church their friends throw candies at them. At the house 
of the groom the man enters first and shuts the door. 
The bride then smears the closed door with honey and 
throws a ripe pomegranate at it. If the pomegranate 
198 



Wood is so scarce in Greece that roots and branches are carefully 
gathered for fuel. For the most part Greek agriculture is quite backward; 
much of the ploughing is done by oxen, while the crops are usually carried 
from the fields on the backs of animals. 



The modern Greeks are born politicians and spend a large part of 
their afternoons sitting about cafe tables discussing the world situation 
and the part Greece must have in setting it right. 





When a modern Greek makes a fortune he wants to do something for 
his country or his native city. Athens owes the re-building of the ancient 
Stadium to the gift of a great merchant prince. 



A series of hermits spent fifty years of their lives on top of one of the 
columns of the Temple of Zeus, not far from the Acropolis. They sub¬ 
sisted on food pulled up in baskets from below. 





















MOTORING THROUGH THE LAND OF HOMER 

breaks and the seeds stick in the honey, it is a sign that 
her married life will be happy. 

As the pomegranate strikes the door, the husband opens 
it and offers his bride bread and salt. She dips the bread 
into the salt and eats it, and then touches some water and 
oil. After this the husband lifts her inside the house and 
puts her in a corner with her back against the wall. She 
stays there without speaking while the man and his 
friends are eating the wedding feast, and it is not until the 
last guest leaves that she may make herself at home. 
This is probably the one time of her life when every 
Xantippe is silent. 


199 


CHAPTER XXVI 


DIGGING UP OLD GREECE 

I AM on the spot that the ancients called “The Navel of 
the Earth.” Almost under my feet was the den of 
Pytho, the serpent oracle, slain by the sun god, Apollo; 
and I can throw a piece of marble from a broken 
statue or column into a hole in the rocks that may have 
been the mouth of the oracle of Delphi. 

It was the oracle that made the city of Delphi, which is 
now represented by the ruins about me. It was consulted 
by the leaders of the republics of Greece on all matters of 
moment, such as the making of laws, the beginning of 
wars, and the rise and fall of nations and men. Alexander 
the Great believed in it; Philip of Macedon bowed down 
before it; and Solon, the lawgiver, Pindar the poet, and 
Plato the wise man, all spoke of it with respect. 

I drove the one hundred and fifty miles between Athens 
and Delphi in an American motor-car. In ancient times 
everyone walked or rode on horses or in chariots. They 
went up from the Gulf of Corinth on foot, for chariots could 
not climb the steep mountain. Delphi is situated on the 
slope of Mount Parnassus, as high up as the top of the Blue 
Ridge, and the mountain rises above it for another mile or 
more. A good automobile road now winds up to Kastri, a 
town near the site of the Oracle City. 

I am writing this in the midst of the ruins. The Gulf of 
200 


DIGGING UP OLD GREECE 

Corinth is more than two thousand feet below me, and 
the land drops in terraces until it is lost in the water. To 
my left in the valley I can see a gray-green olive grove, its 
thousands of trees skirting the sea; and all about me are 
the remains of ancient temples and theatres and the paved 
streets of the old city, laid bare by the archaeologists. 

The ruins, which cover hundreds of acres, are backed 
by gigantic pink and gray cliffs rising straight ’ upward 
for thousands of feet. I am sitting in the Temple of 
Apollo, to which I climbed by the Sacra Via, a flagstone 
roadway lined with broken columns, bits of statues, and 
the beautiful carvings of the civilization of twenty-five 
hundred years ago. 

Except for a column or so and the great stone blocks that 
made the foundation, the Temple of Apollo is all gone. Its 
floor covered almost one third of an acre, and by my paces 
it was about two hundred feet long and seventy-five feet 
in width. I have counted the columns from the holes 
in which they were set, and find it took fifteen to support 
the great roof. My guide tells me that the oracle was 
supposed to be under the floor of the temple, but so far no 
one has been able to discover the hole in the rocks over 
which the Pythoness sat upon her tripod and delivered the 
words supposed to have come to her from Apollo himself. 
Before she seated herself there she chewed the sacred bay 
leaves and drank of the waters of the prophetic stream of 
Kassotis. Then, according to some, she was intoxicated 
by the ill-smelling vapours that arose through the cleft, 
and in this state muttered the oracular answers to ques¬ 
tions which the priests about her put into intelligible sen¬ 
tences. The devout even claimed that these vapours 
were the mystic breath of the god, but the probability is 
201 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

that there were no exhalations whatever through the 
fissure, though there may have been a slight draft of air. 
This, however, would have been enough to complete the 
already overwrought condition of the priestess. 

As 1 looked at the spot where the Pythoness may have 
sat, an American girl engaged in relief work on the island 
of Crete was standing beside me and said: 

'' 1 would like to have seen the old dame who put it over 
on them.” 

There was a temple on this site long before Rome was 
founded. It was burned to the ground and a new one 
was erected in 548 B.C., when Cyrus was king of the Per¬ 
sians. Another temple was constructed two hundred 
years later, at the time of Demosthenes, and additions 
were made by Nero and Domitian along about the begin¬ 
ning of the Christian era. In the vestibule of the temple 
were engraved the sayings of the Seven Sages, such as 

Know thyself,” ''Moderation in all things,” and "Noth¬ 
ing in excess,” and inside the building itself was a great 
stone the shape of half an egg, which marked the centre of 
the world. On this stone the two eagles that Zeus had 
caused to fly from the opposite ends of the earth met and 
roosted together. 

About this temple were vaults filled with gold and other 
wealth presented as offerings to the oracle by the great 
cities of Greece. The treasury of the Athenians has been 
reerected out of the fragments of the building, but the 
golden shields taken from the Persians in the year 340 
B.C. are still unrecovered. These accumulations of riches 
were looted by the conquerors who overran Greece. 
Sulla, who later besieged Athens, used the Delphic treas¬ 
ures for the payment of his troops, and Nero divided the 


202 


DIGGING UP OLD GREECE 


plain below here among his soldiers and took five hundred 
statues from the temple to Rome. At the time of Pliny 
there were still three thousand statues at Delphi, and the 
country about was one vast museum. 

Higher up on Mount Parnassus are the remains of the 
great theatre, and higher still those of the stadium where 
ancient games were held just as modern athletics are cele¬ 
brated in the big marble stadium of the Athens of to-day. 
The stadium of Delphi was longer than that of Athens, but 
not so wide. The stadium at Athens will seat fifty thou¬ 
sand spectators. 

The theatre was an open-air hall paved with limestone 
slabs; it had seats of stone. It was in existence two thou¬ 
sand years ago, for at that time one of the distinguished 
citizens of Greece gave money for its restoration. The 
acoustics seem to have been perfect, for, sitting below in 
the temple, I could hear the sweet nothings that my secre¬ 
tary was whispering in the ear of the American maiden 
from Crete as they stood far above me. 

Most of the excavations of Delphi have been made 
by the French. A much greater work, directed by the 
American School of Classical Studies, has gone on at 
Corinth, where St. Paul went after his eloquent sermon on 
Mars’ Hill in Athens. Paul lived in Corinth a year and a 
half with Aquila, the tentmaker, and he came back six 
years later and 'There abode” three months in the house 
of Gaius. During his first stay he established a church and 
wrote the Epistle to the Thessalonians, and while he was 
with Gaius he wrote his Epistles to the Romans and 
Galatians. 

The American School, however, has made no discoveries 
as to St. Paul. Its work has been in excavating the ancient 
203 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

city and reconstructing parts of the ruins. Corinth was 
at the height of its glory hundreds of years before Christ, 
and in the days of our Saviour it was noted for its commerce 
and manufacture. It was then as large as Baltimore is 
now, and was a rival of Rome in its trade. It was one of 
the chief ports of the Mediterranean Sea. The historians 
say that it was twelve miles in circumference. 

Later Corinth rebelled against Rome, and the Romans 
destroyed it. They sold its citizens into slavery, and for 
one hundred years it lay desolate. Julius C^sar reestab¬ 
lished the town, and by the time St. Paul came, which was 
about fifty years after Christ, it was again celebrated 
throughout the Near East for its luxury and vice. St. 
Paul takes account of these things in his Epistles. 

1 went out by train to Corinth a few days ago. The 
modern town is not far from the western mouth of the 
Corinth Canal, and it may be reached by boat through the 
canal, by railway, or by automobile. It is an ordinary 
little Greek city of five thousand people. 

The ruins lie about five miles away. There are Ameri¬ 
cans in charge, and it was with one of them that I wandered 
over the remains of the great past that are now coming to 
view. Among the excavations have been those of the 
waterworks and the fountain, fed by the spring of Pirene, 
where Pegasus, the winged horse, came to drink and was 
at last captured by Bellerophon. Pegasus, as the story 
goes, struck the earth with his hoof and the water gushed 
forth, even as it did in Meribah when Moses smote the 
rock for the thirsting Israelites. The fountain dates back 
to from three to six centuries before Christ, and the water 
again flows out of the marble lion heads into a square pit 
of stone, as it did in the past. The American School has 
204 


DIGGING UP OLD GREECE 


excavated the old aqueduct. The reservoirs fed by the 
spring had a capacity of one hundred and twenty thousand 
gallons. 

Among the other excavations are those of the streets 
and shops of the city and the remains of a theatre and the 
2,500 year old Temple of Apollo with its lofty columns 
eight feet in diameter. 

To me one of the most interesting discoveries is that of 
the oracle of Corinth, which gave forth decrees like the 
one I have described here at Delphi. The oracle at Cor¬ 
inth was connected by a subterranean passage, fitted with 
a mouthpiece that served as a speaking tube. The ar¬ 
rangement was such that the priest could crawl in under¬ 
ground some distance away and, by a little ventriloquism, 
make his prophetic words seem to come out of the mouth 
of the oracle. If the ancients had discovered the radio, 
they might have broadcasted the words of the gods to all 
parts of Greece. 

I am proud of what the American archaeologists are 
doing in digging up ancient Greece and opening its wonders 
to the eyes of the world. About a half century ago the 
American Institute of Archaeology established a school of 
classical studies at Athens. The object was to give gradu¬ 
ates of American universities and colleges an opportunity 
to study the classics and Greek art and antiquities on the 
ground, and to aid in original research in these subjects. 
The best of Greek professors were chosen, and nine of our 
colleges and universities undertook to pay the expenses 
until a permanent endowment could be secured. The 
school was established in 1882 and the first president of 
the board was James Russell Lowell. The committee 
that now runs the institution consists of representatives 
205 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

from thirty-three colleges scattered over the United 
States. 

During my stay at Athens I went out to see the school 
buildings. They stand on the southern slope of Lycabet- 
tus and look out at the Acropolis and Mount Hymettus. 
The ground for them was given by King George I of Greece 
and additional space has been acquired partly by gift from 
the Greek government and partly by purchase. It is in¬ 
tended to erect a dormitory for American girls who come 
to this country to study the classics. 

This school has the largest and best library of ancient 
Greece known to the world. This was started by the 
school itself, some of the money having been given by John 
Hay, the Carnegie Corporation, and John D. Rockefeller. 
In addition to this, the school has just received the mag¬ 
nificent library of fifty thousand pieces collected by Dr. 
Joannes Gennadius, who for forty years was Greek minis¬ 
ter at the Court of St. James’s. Doctor Gennadius was an 
eminent scholar and devoted his life to the collection of 
these books. Dr. Herbert Putnam, the director of our 
Library of Congress, and one of the best authorities on 
ancient and modern bibliography, has appraised the li¬ 
brary and says that it has no equal anywhere. 

Every American student who comes here is expected to 
make some definite study or research and write a paper 
thereon. The school has many lecturers, and the classes 
go to all parts of Greece, the Greek government giving 
them half fare on the railroads. They have made import¬ 
ant excavations, not only in Greece but about the site of 
old Troy and elsewhere in Asia Minor. Their work at 
Corinth has been carried on for more than thirty years. 
During this time they have laid bare the area of a large 
206 



When the modern Greek girl is contrasted with the classic beauties 
on the Porch of the Maidens, built twenty-three centuries ago, it is plain 
that the ancient type has not survived. 














Dominating the landscape for miles about Corinth is the bold summit 
of Acro-Corinth. On its top is the spring Pirene, which, the legend says, 
gushed forth at a stroke from the hoof of the winged horse Pegasus. 



The canal across the Isthmus of Corinth was planned in Caesar’s time, 
but It was not until i88i that actual digging began. It shortens the 
voyage from the Piraeus to the Adriatic by two hundred miles. 







DIGGING UP OLD GREECE 


city, and have made remarkable finds, including temples 
and statues which cast a new light upon ancient Greek 
civilization. 

Athens has a national museum where one can build up in 
his mind the Greece of the past. The excavations are 
going on everywhere, and many new objects are being dis¬ 
covered. The Greek government is alive to the responsi¬ 
bility of safeguarding its antiquities, and for years has 
been running a lottery the income from which is used for 
digging up and caring for ancient Greece. This lottery 
has two hundred and fifty-five prizes, ranging in value 
from ten dollars to five thousand dollars each. 

The wonderful discoveries in the tomb of Tut-ankh- 
amen in the Valley of the Kings along the Nile have their 
counterpart in the gold and jewels unearthed by Doctor 
Schliemann and other explorers in Greece. The National 
Museum has masks of beaten gold in which have been 
pressed features so lifelike that they seem about to speak. 
I have the photograph of one representing the face of an 
old man, which would serve as a portrait of the original 
except that it has lost the tip of its nose. There are golden 
cups decorated with portraits, and vases of dull gold 
beautifully carved. Some of the cups would hold a half 
gallon, and the golden masks are as large as the tin 
wash basins outside the back door of an American farm¬ 
house. , 

I am especially interested in the collections of jewellery, 
which show so well the follies and vanities of fashionable 
life five hundred years before Christ. Among other ex¬ 
hibits is the skull of a woman with the gold pin which 
once bound her tresses stuck to it. Time and decay have 
glued the pin to the base of her neck. Near by are scores 
207 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

of gold rings for the fingers, a peck or so of gold anklets, 
and huge gold rings for the biceps, somewhat similar to the 
ivory bracelets worn above the elbows by our women of to¬ 
day. Some of the arm rings which came from Mycen^ are 
three or four inches wide. They are of pure gold. 


208 


CHAPTER XXVII 


SEEN IN SOFIA 

A RE you tired? Is your soul down in the dumps? 

/\ If so, put on the cap of Eortunatus and fly across 
/ " A the Atlantic for a plunge into the great munici- 
^ pal mineral bath of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. 
That will take the tired feeling out of your bones, cleanse 
every one of the million pores of your body, and make your 
soul sing like the turtle dove in Solomon’s Song. The water 
is from a hot mineral spring; it is a transparent emerald- 
green, and it feels like velvet as it flows over your skin. 

I know of no other city on earth with a bath like this 
one. The building over the pool is larger than our two 
Houses of Congress put together. It covers five or six 
acres and looks like a palace. Rising out of the centre of 
Sofia and facing the mosque across a beautiful park, it 
is one of the striking features of this city. It is a great 
square structure, perhaps fifty feet high, with walls of 
white striped with red brick. A gorgeous frieze of porce¬ 
lain blocks bands it just beneath the red-tiled roof. The 
bath is reached through a stately entrance, and the in¬ 
terior is so ornate that it would not have been out of place 
in Rome or Pompeii in the days of their greatest magni¬ 
ficence. 

The swimming pool is walled with tiles, and from the 
mosaic walk about it rises a dado of green porcelain as 
high as my head. Around the basin are many cells where 
209 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

one can lie on a slab while a masseur works on him. There 
are also douches and showers and hundreds of first- and 
second-class rooms where one can have a tub to himself. 
A plunge in the pool costs only about fifteen cents. The 
huge building is filled from six in the morning until far 
into the night, and 1 am told that ten thousand people 
bathe here every day. In the morning it is less crowded 
than in the evening, for many people bathe after their work 
is over, and up to midnight there is a long waiting line. 

Bulgaria is a land of hot mineral springs. I recently 
motored out to Banke, a bathing resort, whose springs have 
the same properties as those at Carlsbad, or Karlovy Vary 
as the Czechs insist that it be called. Here I found another 
beautifully equipped establishment with a large swimming 
pool, besides many private baths sunk into the floor. 

So much for cleansing your body. If you want a spirit¬ 
ual ablution, Sofia has an establishment grander than 
its mineral baths. I refer to the mighty Alexander 
Nevsky Cathedral. Imagine a white stone church bigger 
than any we have in America, covering as much ground as 
a great government department building and topped with 
a gold-plated dome as big as a circus tent and shining like a 
new wedding ring, and you have a faint outline of the 
picture. To fill in your sketch you must add smaller 
gold domes over four or five cupolas, put great caps of 
gold above the entrances, and let the entire structure 
glisten under the sun of this semi-tropical country. 

The interior of the Cathedral is even more splendid 
than its outside. It is a great blaze of carving, frescoes, 
paintings, and gold decorations. Chapel after chapel is 
shut off by a lacework of marble that reminds me of that 
in the Taj Mahal at Agra. There are walls inlaid with 


210 



Market day in Sofia brings to town people who, to judge by their 
costumes, have stepped out of the Middle Ages into the twentieth 
century. The women attend to business, but the men devote the day 
largely to gossip and politics. 





The Bulgarians are adherents of the Orthodox Church, which broke 
away from the Church of Rome during the strife between the Eastern 
and the Western Empires. The Cathedral at Sofia is the religious capitol 

Ot the cniintrv ° ^ 








SEEN IN SOFIA 


semi-precious stones that recall the palaces of Delhi. 
There are columns that look like malachite and others of 
onyx, upholding frescoed ceilings. The whole is a jewel 
of gigantic size and marvellous beauty. The pulpit, for 
instance, is of alabaster with an alabaster eagle on whose 
back is a gold rest for the Bible. The throne of the 
Archbishop is ascended by steps of onyx and the dignitary 
sits beneath a carved canopy of white marble upheld by 
pillars of dark gray, shining stone, with capitals decorated 
in gold. The pillars in front rest on the backs of life-size 
lions of pure alabaster, gleaming like polished ivory, and 
the lacework of stone behind is of exquisite beauty. There 
is a wealth of mosaics, some of which remind me of those 
in St. Mark's at Venice. In short, there is such a mass of 
artistic decoration that it makes me think of the saying 
about the great temples of India—that their builders 
wrought like Titans and finished like jewellers. 

This huge building cost more than five million dollars. 
Yet it was built by a nation of peasants, whose average 
holding of land is less than twenty acres per family and 
who labour for less than one dollar a day. 

But perhaps you care more for your mind than for 
either your body or your soul. In that case, you will want 
to have a look at the intellectual resources of the Bulgar 
capital. You should visit its universities, with their 
eight thousand students, its high schools and technical 
institutes, and its American Y. M. C. A. trade school, 
ninety per cent, of whose students get jobs as electricians, 
surveyors, and engineers, before they are graduated. Or 
better still, go to the two museums, where you can study 
both the past and the present. 

First cross the square in which the Cathedral stands 


21 I 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

and go past the great bronze statue of Alexander of Russia, 
the Liberator, to the National Costumes Museum. This 
contains exhibits of the many different kinds of work 
that make the Bulgarian peasants independent of the 
factories and mills of the rest of the world. Here in a 
large three-story building are the hand looms on which 
are woven the rugs and the gorgeous gold braid, cloths, 
and embroideries which are known everywhere. Bul¬ 
garia is a land of house industries. The farmer clips the 
wool from his sheep and his wife spins and weaves it into 
clothes for the family. He makes his own hardware and 
most of his pottery dishes and other utensils. Here are 
specimens of the rude contrivances for churning butter, 
grinding wheat, and making bread that have been in use 
for generations. In fact, here is displayed on a small 
canvas, as it were, a complete picture of the home life 
and work of the people. 

The other museum is just across the way from my hotel. 
It is in an old Turkish mosque with eight low domes, each 
of which is as big as a haystack. This building is full 
of archaeological treasures and relics, mosaics, frescoes, 
and paintings. There are no statues of saints, as by the 
tenets of the Greek Catholic Church such images are for¬ 
bidden. This is the reason why the icons, the representa¬ 
tions of Christ or the saints to be found in every church 
and in almost every home in Bulgaria, are not ''graven 
images.The statues in the museum are those of the 
Romans. They date back to the days of the Emperor 
Trajan or to times still more remote. There are broken 
and battered columns from the ancient temples, great mar¬ 
bles from antique fountains, and huge sarcophagi from 
which the dust of their one-time occupants has long since 
212 


SEEN IN SOFIA 


blown away. The exhibits of classic art overflow the 
building and fill a great part of the yard. 

And now take a look at the setting of the things I 
have mentioned. Sofia lies in a plain surrounded by moun¬ 
tains and has spread herself over a large area. The city 
is a mixture of the rich and the poor, the grand and the 
shabby, the sublime and the ridiculous. Each treads on 
the heels of the other and it is hard to tell where one 
ends and the other begins. 

The town has grown since the war. Refugees from 
Russia, Macedonia, and other countries surrounding it 
have swelled the population until it is close to one third 
of a million. All the dwellings are full, and in the suburbs 
little houses not much bigger than good-sized dog ken¬ 
nels dot the plains. In the centre of the city is the 
royal palace. 

Sofia is a blending of the old and the new. Its build¬ 
ings are largely oriental and some of them date back to the 
five hundred years of Turkish rule. One sees the remains 
of the ancient bazaars, yet there are many new stores with 
plate-glass windows. The signs over the stores are in the 
Greek letters used by the Slavs, and some have on the out¬ 
side walls pictures of the goods sold within. Any one can 
read pictures, and when I see a painting of Teddy bears, 
dolls, and go-carts on a shop front I know the sign is that 
of a toy store. The city has a half-dozen theatres, a big 
market house, several good-sized hotels, of which the less 
said the better, and many parks and public playgrounds. 

But the most interesting thing about any place is its 
people. If you could lift the crowd promenading back and 
forth along Main Street here every afternoon and drop it 
down into any American town, it would create a sensation. 

213 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

To begin with, the women go about with arms bared to the 
shoulders and in gowns cut low at the neck. They wear 
bright colours but they lack the beauty of the girls of 
Budapest and Vienna. There are Russian refugees, the 
men with their black trousers pushed into the tops of 
high black boots and their shirts extending outside half¬ 
way to the thighs; the women are in attractive gowns 
with shawls wrapped round their heads to form turbans. 
There are Mohammedans in fezzes, and Macedonians 
wearing full breeches, each leg of which has enough material 
for a whole suit of clothes. There are soldiers in brown 
woollen homespun with visorless caps on their heads, and 
officers in white caps and with wide red stripes on their 
trousers. The officers carry swords and some of the soldiers 
have rifles. There are long-gowned priests with high black 
caps and peasants dressed in all the colours of the rainbow. 

But the best time to see the native Bulgars is on Friday 
in the Sofia market, to which the people from the villages 
for miles about come in by thousands to buy and sell 
and get gain. I have been in the bazaars at Burma, Delhi, 
Algiers, Damascus, and Cairo; I have bought wares in the 
market encampments of Central Africa, and have shopped 
in Bangkok, Tokyo, and Peking, but nowhere have I seen 
a more interesting gathering than that which collects in 
the wide streets of Sofia on a Friday. 

The people come in twos and threes and in companies. 
Many arrive in home-made farm wagons hauled by black 
water buffaloes, white oxen, or ratty little ponies. Each 
vehicle is so heavily loaded with vegetables, melons, poul¬ 
try in crates, and fruit in baskets, that one would think 
it might break down on the road. Others tramp in with 
great packs on their backs or fastened to the ends of poles 
214 



In all tlie Balkan cities the lemonade seller is a popular figure, and 
always on hand. In Sofia it is not uncommon for street cars to prolong 
their stops so the passengers can buy drinks from the street vendors. 











In Bulgaria every village has its own variations of the national costume, 
so that one who knows the country can tell at a glance the home town of 
every girl seen in the Sofia markets. 







SEEN IN SOFIA 


resting on their shoulders. They get in before daybreak 
and distribute their wares over the streets, covering a 
space perhaps two miles in length and crossed here and 
there by side streets. 

A large part of the market is given up to foods. There 
are mountains of vegetables, including white onions as big 
as your fist, great round tomatoes the colour of blood, 
green watermelons the size and shape of your head, blue 
plums, yellow apricots, and peaches of a roseate bloom. 
There are beans, green and ripe, white turnips and yellow 
squashes, roasting ears just from the stalk, green peppers 
six inches long and two inches thick, lettuce, and in fact 
every vegetable that we have in America. 

Some of the wares give an idea of the backward ways 
of the farmer. There are yokes for women to use in carry¬ 
ing pails on their shoulders, home-made ploughs and other 
implements, and wagonloads of wooden hayforks that are 
merely forked sticks, cut in the thickets and peeled. There 
are wool peddlers selling the dirty black or white fleeces 
just as they come from the sheep. That wool will be cleaned 
and spun in the homes of the buyers and used to make the 
clothing for their families. We have here a nation of five 
million people, four millions of whom, I venture, are wear¬ 
ing garments made of materials woven by the women. 

The market is a good place to study the costumes of the 
peasants. This is one part of Europe where the styles are 
the same as they were generations ago. Every village has 
its own variations in costume, so that those familiar with 
the country can tell the home of any one in the crowd. 
Most of the costumes are so gorgeous that one cannot see 
their like anywhere else except on the stage. Here come 
half-a-dozen girls. They have yellow silk kerchiefs wrapped 
215 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

round their heads and their long braids of black hair hang 
down their backs. Each has the necklace of gold or silver 
coins constituting her dowry, and wears a gown heavily 
embroidered with gold braid. The gown falls almost to 
the feet. It is dark coloured, but about the bottom there 
is a band of gold embroidery twice as wide as your palm. 
Under this band is a fringe of white lace. The sleeves of 
the white guimpe are embroidered with red and blue silk 
in quaint patterns. Behind this party come other girls 
in long yellow aprons and dresses gorgeous with gilt braid. 

The men are almost equally interesting. Some have high 
black caps of lambskin with the wool outside, and their 
clothes are of a butternut brown, often gaily embroidered. 
They wear vests and belts and trousers all of homespun. 
The trousers are wrapped tight around the ankle and the 
soft leather sandals are tied on with straps like the opantsis 
of the Serbian peasants. Others have on heavy boots 
reaching almost to their knees. Perhaps the scene and 
the people would not have seemed queer in the Middle 
Ages, but in this prosaic, every-day twentieth century the 
effect is certainly strange. 


216 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


BULGARIA AND ITS KING 

S INCE I came to Sofia I have had the honour of an 
audience with his Majesty, Boris III, who is now 
) the czar, or king, of Bulgaria. He is a constitu¬ 
tional monarch, having powers somewhat similar 
to those of the king of England. He is also an hereditary 
ruler, his father Ferdinand having been made the first 
king of the Bulgars. 

The principality of Bulgaria was created forty-odd 
years ago by the Treaty of Berlin, through which the coun¬ 
try became self-governing, though it had to pay tribute to 
the sultan of Turkey. It was decreed that a prince should 
be elected by the people and confirmed by the sultan, with 
the consent of the Powers. At last, in 1908, Bulgaria 
declared its independence of Turkey and Prince Ferdinand 
was placed on the throne. 

Ferdinand was naturally a fighter. He was in close 
alliance with the Germans and brought in German officers 
to aid in the organization of his army. It was largely 
through his influence that Bulgaria sided with the Kaiser 
during the war, although the sympathies of most of the 
people were with the Allies. 

In the last days of the war, Ferdinand had to abdicate 
and he fled to Vienna, where he consoled himself with a 
third wife, a Brazilian heiress. Boris III, then twenty- 
seven years of age, came to the throne on October 3, 1918. 
217 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

The people like him for his democratic ways. He goes 
about Sofia like an ordinary citizen, dressed in everyday 
business clothes. In striking contrast with Kaiser Wilhelm, 
his father's friend, who loved to strut around in the 
gorgeous outfit of a general and sometimes changed his 
uniforms a dozen times in one day. King Boris seldom 
wears military dress. He shakes hands with his friends 
when he meets them and may stop and chat. Indeed, he 
is so unpretentious that his father, who liked to wrap 
himself in the divinity that '‘doth hedge a king," often 
reproved him for his democratic ways and now and then 
referred to him as "that peasant." 

His Majesty has as royal blood in his veins as any 
monarch in Europe, for he is a great-grandson of Louis 
Philippe of France. But he has had the good sense to adapt 
himself to his situation, which is that of the ruler of a 
peasant democracy. He is a man of fine education with a 
scientific bent as well as a mechanical turn of mind. He 
sometimes drives his own automobile, and he so well under¬ 
stands the operation of a railway locomotive that on his 
trips through his country he often leaves the royal coach 
for the cab of the engine and runs the train for miles. 
The other day he was going to Vidin, one of the towns on 
the Danube. He was in the cab with his hand on the levers 
and had brought the train to a stop at a station where a 
great crowd had gathered to greet him. They kept on 
cheering him until he stood up in the blue denim of a 
locomotive engineer and made them a speech. At Vidin, 
when he boarded a little steamer for the other side of the 
Danube, he went into the pilot house and took the wheel, 
guiding the ship up the Danube to its destination and then 
back to Vidin. 


218 


BULGARIA AND ITS KING 


The people like Boris for his conduct during the war. 
He is the hero of their army, for he went out with the 
soldiers and slept in the trenches and was a number of 
times under fire. He is thoroughly interested in every¬ 
thing connected with the advancement of the country, 
particularly in the new athletic movement. He is honorary 
president of the National Athletic Association and has 
made football a national game. 

My audience with His Majesty was fixed for eleven 
o'clock in the morning at the Royal Palace in Sofia. 
This is a large yellow building in the centre of the city, 
surrounded by a beautiful garden. A three-minute walk 
from the door of my hotel brought me to the gates. 
Passing the soldiers stationed there, I entered the palace. 
Here I was met by the master of the King's household 
and introduced to one of his aides who led me to a big 
salon on the second floor. This reception room was 
decorated with arms of every description, including 
a miniature machine gun mounted on a table. Oil paintings 
of the two Russian czars who helped so much to give Bul¬ 
garia its independence looked down upon me, and a por¬ 
trait of old King Ferdinand occupied a prominent place. 

I had waited only five minutes when the aide led me 
into another salon where a lithe, dark-faced young man 
rose and came toward me. It was Boris, King of Bulgaria. 
He was dressed in a light pepper-and-salt business suit of 
a good cut. He wore a stiff collar with a gray knit tie 
in which was a small ruby encircled with diamonds. His 
Majesty gave me his hand and we sat down and chatted for 
some time together. I am not at liberty to quote what he 
said, but I can say that his talk was full of good common- 
sense views on conditions in this part of the world, and 
219 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

of friendliness and gratitude to the American people for 
their aid to Bulgaria in settling matters after the war. 
He said he would like much to go to America and that his 
father, King Ferdinand, had felt strongly inclined to 
accept the invitation he received to attend the opening 
of the Panama Canal. At the close of the audience, I 
walked with His Majesty down to the rear of the palace, 
where my photographer made a snapshot of the King. 

And who are the Bulgarians, the subjects of this con¬ 
stitutional monarch? He governs a nation of five million 
people, the descendants of Slavic tribes which centuries 
ago settled here in the Balkans. They are a sturdy, sober, 
and hard-working folk, who are also proud and warlike, 
for they have imbibed the spirit of liberty from the air 
of the mountains in which they live. Though for 
hundreds of years they were oppressed by the Turks, 
they always fought against their rulers and kept alive 
their desire for freedom. In their communities the people 
insist on managing local affairs and every little town 
elects its own officials. Even the school teachers are 
elected and may be dismissed at any time by popular vote. 

Considering that less than fifty years ago they had 
practically no schools at all, the Bulgarians are well edu¬ 
cated. In the days of the Turkish domination not more 
than one man in five in the cities could read and write 
and nearly all the country people were illiterate. Eighty- 
five out of every one hundred of the population can now 
read and write, notwithstanding the fact that there are 
something like six hundred thousand Turks, most of whom 
study only the Koran. In 1878, when the Treaty of Berlin 
was signed, there was only one school in the whole country 
that could be called an academy or high school. There are 


220 


BULGARIA AND ITS KING 

now more than six hundred, and the number of elementary 
schools is above five thousand. There are about as many 
girls as boys among the eight thousand students in the two 
universities at Sofia. 

Doctor Kissimoff, of the State Department, tells me that 
the Bulgarian peasant will make almost any sacrifice to 
keep his children in school and that he will even sell his 
farm in order that they may start life with a better 
equipment than he was able to get. Despite the losses 
of the World War and the financial depression following it, 
new schools have been started and there are thirteen in¬ 
stitutions for training teachers. 

Doctor Kissimoff is a graduate of Robert College, a 
former representative of his country at Odessa and Mos¬ 
cow, and a man of wide experience in the courts of Europe. 
Said he: 

I would like to have the United States know the 
truth about our people, more than eighty-five per cent, of 
whom belong to the peasant class. The Bulgarian has good 
traits and bad ones. Among his good qualities are his 
great love of education and his desire to better himself 
and his family. He is careful and thrifty. He is a 
landholder, and he prides himself on owning his farm. He 
is not ashamed of his condition and he is independent and 
honest. 

''On the other hand, the Bulgarian is very distrust¬ 
ful of others,’' continued Doctor Kissimoff. "His psy¬ 
chology is largely due to his having been for five centuries 
under the Turks, with oppression and even massacre al¬ 
ways hanging over him. This has made him afraid of the 
future, so that no matter how bright the sky to-day, he 
fears it will be dark to-morrow. If a mother sees her 


22 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

children laughing and having a good time, she begs them 
not to enjoy themselves so much lest something disastrous 
befall. In fact, the peasant looks upon life as a burden. 
His attitude reminds me of a hymn sung in some of your 
churches. I cannot quote it correctly but it goes some¬ 
what like this: 

A little more trouble, a few more fears, 

A few more sobs and a few more tears. 

We are almost home."" 

The Bulgarians are essentially pious. I have visited a 
number of their gorgeous churches and have usually found 
them full. These people belong to the great class of 
Orthodox Christians of whom we know comparatively 
little. Of the six hundred millions, or one third of the 
whole human family who actually are or pretend to be 
followers of Jesus, one in every four belongs to the Ortho¬ 
dox Church. The others are Roman Catholics or Protes¬ 
tants. 

This faith was long known as the Greek Orthodox 
Catholic Church, so named from the branch that broke 
away from Roman Catholicism during the strife between 
the Eastern and the Western Empires of Rome. Then these 
Orthodox people threw off the rule of the Pope and decided 
to flock by themselves. The first split occurred more 
than a thousand years ago. The trouble continued until 
the two bodies became separate churches, each with its 
own rules of faith. The Greek Church recognizes the 
guidance of the Bible, and, in common with the Roman 
Catholics, holds to the doctrines of the seven sacraments, 
the celebration of the mass, and the veneration of the Vir¬ 
gin Mary and of the saints, the images, and the relics. It 
222 



From his modest palace in Sofia the King of the Bulgars rules over a 
nation of five million people who for centuries were under the rule of the 
Turk and won their independence less than a generation ago. 



In prly summer Bulgaria’s “Valley of the Roses” is full of harvesters, 
gathering the petals to be distilled for attar of roses. An acre produces 
four thousand pounds of petals, but it takes two hundred pounds to make 
a single ounce of the perfume. 














Philippopolis, which aspires to be a second Sofia, is really a transition 
town, partly old Turkish houses and bazaars, partly modern streets and 
buildings. It does a large business in rice, silk cocoons, and attar of roses. 





















BULGARIA AND ITS KING 


believes in fasting and has its monasteries and nunneries. 
On the other hand, it acknowledges the authority of the 
Ecumenical Council instead of the leadership of the Pope, 
and administers the Lord’s Supper in both bread and wine. 
Although it denies the existence of Purgatory, it encour¬ 
ages prayers for the dead that God may have mercy upon 
them at the Last Judgment. It accepts married priests, 
though they must not marry after they have taken holy 
orders. The Orthodox Catholics have only one mass a 
day, and that before the rising of the sun. Until recently 
the sermon was not considered important. 

I have talked with the Archbishop of Sofia, His Holi¬ 
ness Monsignor Stephane, one of the chief ecclesiastical 
dignitaries of Bulgaria. In times past the whole Orthodox 
Church was under the Greek Patriarch at Constantinople, 
but he seems to have lost prestige by mixing politics with 
his religion, and in time the various Orthodox countries 
established independent organizations of their own, such 
as the Synod of Russia and other church councils. The 
Church has been so divided that now the Greeks are practi¬ 
cally the only people that acknowledge the supremacy of 
His All Holiness, the Patriarch of Constantinople. The 
Church here does not like to be called Greek Orthodox. 
Its members say it is the Bulgarian Orthodox Catholic 
Church, and I find that the same prejudices and divisions 
exist in Serbia, Albania, Rumania, and Russia. 

Archbishop Stephane is one of the leading Christians 
of this part of the world. He is tall and fine-looking 
and wears a long black gown of the finest grosgrain silk. 
His high black hat makes him look taller and sets off his 
handsome, intellectual face. When I talked with him, he 
wore a heavy gold chain around his neck upon which there 
223 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

hung a medallion the size of your hand surrounded by a 
band of diamonds, some of them as big as peas. At the 
top were five great amethysts, and in the centre was a 
miniature depicting Christ on the cross. 

His Holiness received me in the Archbishop’s Palace 
and after drinking a little cup of coffee made Turkish style, 
as hot as Tophet and as thick as molasses, we talked for 
a while about the Church Universal. The Archbishop 
spoke in a low tone, gesturing now and then with his right 
hand, about the wrist of which a rosary of big black beads 
was tightly wrapped. 

Upon leaving 1 begged the Archbishop to write me a few 
lines as a message to the United States. He did so and his 
letter now lies before me. It reads: 

I believe that America is destined to become the Universal Apostle 
for the unification of Christendom, for the realization of international 
brotherhood, and for the establishment of everlasting justice and peace 
among the nations. The human race must form one family, of which 
the head shall be Christ. 

The last word to be uttered to the world has been entrusted to 
America and America must utter it. It is harmony, brotherhood, and 
peace among the nations as the children of one'Heavenly Father. 

The first achievement of this All-American message must be the 
termination of Bolshevism, which is a denial alike of freedom and of 
humanity. 

Under the blessed, starry banner of the United States must rally 
every force of constructiveness, honour, and idealism the world over in 
order that the Kingdom of God on earth may come soon. 

This letter is signed ''Stephane, Archbishop of Sofia,” 
with a cross before and after the name. 


224 


CHAPTER XXIX 


A NATIONAL LABOUR ARMY 

T he first sight that greeted my eyes upon coming 
into Sofia was a gang of twenty-five husky, 
bronzed young men in light gray uniforms 
unloading cord wood from a train of box cars. 
That was my first glimpse of the great labour army of 
Bulgaria, where almost everyone owns a bit of land and 
practically all work for their living. In this case they 
were working for the state, for by the law of the country 
tens of thousands of young men and women have to give 
from six to twelve months' labour to the government. 

But let me state the facts one needs to know in order to 
understand this remarkable situation. Bulgaria is situ¬ 
ated in the midst of the Balkan mountains east of Yugo¬ 
slavia, north of Greece, south of Rumania, and west 
of Turkey. Sofia, where I am writing, is about three hun¬ 
dred miles from Constantinople. The Kingdom is two 
thirds the size of England, and its population is about five 
millions. Agriculture is almost the only industry of the 
country. 

Bulgaria has but few large cities. Sofia is twice the 
size of Memphis; Philippopolis, in the central part, is 
about the size of Peoria, Illinois; and Varna, the Black 
Sea port of the country, is about as big as Mobile. There 
are perhaps a dozen other cities, but the bulk of the popula¬ 
tion live in small villages, from which they go out to work 
225 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

on the farms. All of the towns need public improvements, 
and the roads are, for the most part, in need of repair. 
The country has enough standard-gauge railroads to reach 
from Boston to the Mississippi River, and an even greater 
length of narrow-gauge tracks. All belong to the state. 

The fact that Bulgaria has had only a little more than 
a generation of independence from Turkey makes the land 
like a new state. The government is anxious to build good 
highways, to construct new railways, to erect municipal 
buildings, and to develop the country to the full. 

When the World War closed, Bulgaria found herself, 
to use the phrase of the streets, down on her uppers, and 
burdened with debt to pay reparations. The people had 
been fighting for years before the war began, and during 
that terrible struggle three hundred thousand of the best 
men were killed. The government needed labour to aid in 
rebuilding the country and so passed laws enlisting as a 
working force all the young men at the age of twenty and 
all the young women at the age of sixteen. Every boy who 
has not been in the army must give from eight to twelve 
months of his time to the state, and the girls serve six 
months. Everyone is also supposed to give from eight to 
ten days service each year, at such times as the authorities 
of the city, town, or district may select. 

Suppose our Congress should pass similar laws, and 
that they should go into force to-morrow. Men, women, 
and children out in the country and in every village, city, 
and town would be subject to eight or ten days’ work as the 
state demanded. The little children might be given dust 
rags and wash cloths and set to cleaning the schoolhouses, 
picking the stones from the school yard, or doing as much 
as they could, however little it might be, for the commu- 
226 



Bulgaria lists in her labour army all young men at the age of twenty 
and all young women at the age of sixteen. The youths must work 
from eight to twelve months for the state, while the girls serve six months. 









The Bulgarian peasant wife helps her husband work the crops, and 
weaves the heavy garments and sews the sheepskin coats of the family. 
She embroiders her daughters’ dresses in brilliant hues and makes them 
elaborate beaded decorations. 



A NATIONAL LABOUR ARMY 


nity. The older children might aid in whitewashing the 
school fences, painting the walls, washing the windows, or 
planting trees to beautify their towns, or they might carry 
water for the gangs of men and women doing heavier work. 
The able-bodied grown-ups might be called upon to ex¬ 
cavate for public buildings, to make new roads, to help 
construct the railways, and to do anything under the sun 
that Uncle Sam might direct for the improvement of his 
country and people. 

Fifty thousand or more men come of age in Bulgaria 
every year and there must be an equal number of young 
women who reach the age of sixteen. The young men are 
divided into groups of twenty or twenty-five each, and are 
handled just as though they belonged to an army. They 
live in barracks, and have their clothing and food free. 
While motoring across country yesterday I saw a gang 
of two hundred of these labour soldiers returning from 
their job of grading for a new railroad. They were dressed 
in gray woollen clothes, woven and tailored in government 
factories operated with men thus conscripted. 

The boys were well set up and muscular and their faces 
were as brown as freshly tanned leather. All looked in 
perfect health, and they walked as if they were starting 
to work rather than returning from it. Their captain told 
me they were in fine condition, and that, although they had 
put in eight hours that day, they would have a dance of 
two hours or more in the evening- 

The jobs for such men are of every description. They 
include road-building, bridge-building, the making of rail¬ 
ways and terminals, employment in the factories, stone 
quarries, and forests, and the draining and the diking of 
swamps and flood lands. I know of boys who are binding 
227 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

books, planting trees, and cleaning up the parks of their 
towns. The duties of the labour conscripts include also 
fishing and the care of animals, as well as artistic and 
intellectual activities. If a man can do sculpture or 
painting he may be put to ornamenting the public build¬ 
ings, or if he is well educated he may be made a school 
teacher or assigned to scientific work. The young archi¬ 
tect helps in planning the government buildings, the 
young engineer is put on docks and harbours, the author 
writes books or pamphlets, and, generally speaking, every 
man is placed where he can be of most service. 

Dr. Constantine Stephanove, a graduate of Yale, a pro¬ 
fessor of philology in one of the universities here, and author 
of the best Bulgarian and English dictionary, and of books 
on economic subjects, tells me that his ten days this year 
were spent in making excavations for an addition to one 
of the state educational institutions. He had twenty- 
five college boys under him. His gang used pick and 
shovel for eight hours every day and enjoyed the work 
more than their studies. Fifty other college boys aided 
in rebuilding the theatre, which had been destroyed by a 
fire, and others helped lay a street railway. 

The girls and women serve chiefly in hospitals, libraries, 
churches, and schools, and also do sewing and other work 
in the government factories. I saw a dozen university 
girls in the Foreign Office yesterday. The daughter of 
a rich man, a college graduate who speaks five or six 
languages, is now translating some of the scientific reports 
of our Geological Survey. She has been on the job four 
months and likes it so well that she may continue after 
the end of the six months for which she was drafted. I 
know of a banker’s daughter of twelve who spent part 
228 


A NATIONAL LABOUR ARMY 


of her allotted time last month washing school windows 
and the rest in sewing for the state. In connection with 
their work in the industrial schools, the girls are taught 
housekeeping and sewing. Home industries, which are 
important here, are being cultivated and the whole scheme 
is educational to a much greater extent than one would 
suppose. The only women exempted are the Moham¬ 
medans, who are excused from work outside their homes 
because of the seclusion demanded by their religion. 

1 have talked with a number of the officials in charge 
of the labour service. They tell me it is popular and that 
they have but few slackers. There is a provision that one 
can gain exemption upon the payment of from one hundred 
and twenty to four hundred dollars, according to his 
wealth. But of the tens of thousands who have been 
drafted, so far less than five hundred have bought them¬ 
selves off. Indeed, buying exemption is considered proof 
of lack of patriotism. 

The system is a great civic educator, which forces upon 
all the citizens the fact of their partnership in the govern¬ 
ment and interests them in the state and the community 
and in every phase of public welfare. It is bringing the 
people closer together, helping to level the differences 
between the various classes, and teaching all better meth¬ 
ods of work as well as obedience to the law. There are no 
class distinctions; the rich and the poor, the ignorant and 
the educated, often labour side by side. 

In the wars of the future this Bulgarian labour army 
will be drafted in just the same way as are those who carry 
the guns and go into the trenches. Had the United States 
had some such system, we should not have been forced to 
pay our army of home workers from ten to twenty dollars a 
229 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

day for building encampments, making munitions, and do¬ 
ing other safe jobs, while the boys who faced the guns and 
endured all sorts of hardships received only a dollar a day 
and their board. 

Stambouliski, the author of these labour laws and the 
man who pushed them through, was one of the most re¬ 
markable characters that have played their parts on the 
stage of Balkan politics during the last generation. He 
was an educated peasant who was active in politics before 
the war, at the close of which he became the popular leader 
of the farmers. He was a man of great ability and much 
common sense, but with his rise to power he lost his head, 
and many think he was plotting to usurp the throne or to 
have himself elected dictator or president of a government 
in which everything should be in the hands of the farmers. 
Stambouliski strove to excite feeling among his followers 
against the towns, boasting that he would level Sofia to 
the ground. He called it another Sodom or Gomorrah, 
and declared that its people were speculators and non¬ 
producers. He removed the old police force and govern¬ 
ment olficials, and put peasants in their places. After his 
assassination something like half a million dollars, mostly 
in foreign currency, was found in his villa, and it is believed 
that he had planned to use this sum for a revolution which 
should make him the king of the Bulgars. 


230 



Students of the University of Bucharest go to classes in a palace-like 
building that symbolizes the Rumanian idea of education as a polish for 
the aristocracy. Out in the country, schools are not plentiful and there 
is much illiteracy. 



"Unlike her Slavic neighbours, Rumania derived her language from 
the Latins and uses the Roman alphabet, as we do. 1 ^he 

meaning of the newspaper headlines without any difficulty.” 












Every Rumanian girl is taught to knit, weave, and embroider, for when 
she marries she will be expected to make all the family clothing, and rugs 
and curtains besides. 











CHAPTER XXX 


GREATER RUMANIA 


B ucharest, the capital of Rumania—a city of 
three quarters of a million, which had only three 
I hundred thousand at the close of the World 
War! The capital of a country which has 
seventeen million people, and which is as large as Great 
Britain and Ireland, twice the size of New England, and 
bigger than New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Dela¬ 
ware, and Maryland all joined together! A city of hovels 
and palaces! A city of great white villas and beautiful 
gardens shaded by tall forest trees and adorned with 
statues and fountains and all the settings of the luxurious 
rich! A city of the poor, fringed with miserable shacks 
in which live half-clad gypsies and their naked babies! 
A gay city, a pleasure-loving city, a city where license is 
said to run riot and love affairs are as unrestrained as those 
of ancient Rome or the wicked Paris of to-day. In short, 
a pretentious, ostentatious, overdressed municipality in 
the midst of a nation of peasants. 

The artistic effects of Bucharest delight the eye, and 
after the stone roadways and cobbles of other Balkan cap¬ 
itals its new asphalt streets soothe the soul. Bucharest has 
long avenues of fine homes and several large parks. One 
wide driveway the people call “the little Champs Elysees.'' 
It is a half mile longer than the avenue between the Place 
de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and is 
231 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

lined with old forest trees. On the bridle paths bordering 
it a crowd of equestrians trot back and forth. The pave¬ 
ments are filled with a gay throng on foot. On the main 
roadway richly dressed women and men roll along in 
carriages pulled by fine horses and driven by coachmen 
dressed in green velvet gowns and caps, their brass belts 
shining like so much gold. There is a sprinkling of auto¬ 
mobiles, the best of the cars of America moving along with 
all the well-known makes of Italy, Germany, England, and 
France. 

Bucharest is fond of its title of “the Little Paris of 
the East.'’ It likes to think that the trees along this 
driveway are as fine as those of the Bois de Boulogne, and 
right in the centre of the boulevard it has built an Arc 
de Triomphe. In the distance this looks like a gigantic 
structure of pure ivory, but when one nears it one sees 
that the ivory is beginning to peel and that gaping cracks 
are spreading apart the foundations. This stucco monu¬ 
ment was erected at the time of King Ferdinand’s cor¬ 
onation and cannot last, although it is now under re¬ 
pair. Unkind people say it is typical of the Rumanian 
capital: all show on the outside and but little substance 
within. 

However that may be, the buildings here are beautiful. 
The houses are covered with decorations that look like carv¬ 
ings in limestone, but most of which were shaped with a 
trowel. The people love white, and the homes of the 
rich are snowy palaces rising amid green trees. The 
Byzantine architecture, with its curved domes and cupolas 
inlaid with colours, prevails. In the interior of the dwell¬ 
ings, the walls are painted or stencilled rather than papered, 
giving an effect that is surprisingly pleasing. 

232 


GREATER RUMANIA 


The stores of Bucharest make a fine show. The goods 
are well displayed behind plate-glass windows and the 
shops seem splendid to one who has just come from Russia, 
Greece, or Bulgaria. Here, instead of the Greek letters, 
the Roman alphabet is used as with us and one can make 
out the inscriptions. One can also gather the news from 
the papers, and keep track of the operas, the theatres, and 
the moving-picture shows. 

All the big cities of central Europe are growing. Berlin 
has gained almost a million in population since the World 
War, Munich is bigger than ever before, and Prague 
has nearly doubled in size. Poor as Austria and Hungary 
claim to be, there are many new buildings in Vienna 
and Budapest, while as for Belgrade, it seems to have at 
work a thousand Aladdins who erect a palace or so over¬ 
night. I find new buildings going up also on all sides in 
this capital of Rumania. 

An interesting thing about the new construction is 
that it is done largely by gypsies. These people do not 
like steady jobs but will come in from their huts on the 
outskirts of the cities and take places as mechanics when 
wages are high. They are especially good bricklayers and 
masons. They work in gangs of forty or fifty, one gang 
taking charge of a house and building it according to 
specifications. The women toil as well as the men. They 
mix the mortar and carry it in buckets on their heads or 
shoulders to the masons. They wheel brick and stone in 
barrows and do all sorts of dirty, hard labour that no 
American woman could be bribed to perform. This morn¬ 
ing I saw a gypsy woman sitting on a pile of bricks and 
nursing her baby, while another was filling a bucket with 
mortar. As I looked, the mother cut short the baby's 

233 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

meal, and laying the little one down on the bricks, lifted 
the heavy mortar bucket to her shoulder and climbed the 
ladder. 

But who are these Rumanians, and where and what is 
their country? The answers to the questions might make 
volumes but I can give you at least the main human inter¬ 
est facts in less space. If you will take your map of Europe 
and follow the course of the Danube to the Black Sea, you 
will find on the north side of that river and including 
its delta the Greater Rumania. It is wedged in between 
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Russia, Yugoslavia, 
and Bulgaria, forming a block of land equal to eight 
Switzerlands or twenty Belgiums or Hollands. Its climate 
is more moderate in summer but much colder in winter 
than that of our South. 

Through the treaties following the World War Rumania 
has been doubled in size, and in natural resources it is 
now one of the richest states of Europe. It embraces a 
large part of the Carpathian Mountains, which have wide 
valleys and plains and plateaus. It has, besides, the 
great belt of black soil forming the delta of the Danube, 
which is as fertile as that of the Mississippi. In the 
past this has been one of the great wheat-exporting 
regions of Europe. Its crops compare well with those 
of the Mississippi Valley. It produces wheat, rye, barley, 
and oats, and it contains the corn belt of south Europe. 
It has also thousands of acres in tobacco, a crop that 
comes to more than ten million pounds in a year. 

Rumania is a land of minerals. Its oil fields are among 
the richest of Europe, and in the new territory gained by 
the treaties of 1919 there are coal, iron, and gold. There 
also are forests so extensive that from them sufficient 
234 


GREATER RUMANIA 


lumber can be produced each year to load a train reaching 
almost all the way from New York to Chicago. 

The country is well equipped with transportation facili¬ 
ties. It has enough railways to make a double track 
across the United States from Boston to Seattle, and its 
public roads would reach round the globe at the Equator, 
with several thousand miles to spare. By the Danube it 
has access to all central and western Europe, and the 
Black Sea gives it a water outlet to the Mediterranean. 
The capital is the principal city, and there are about ten 
towns with populations ranging from fifty to one hundred 
thousand people. For the most part, the Rumanians are 
peasants living in an infinite number of villages, some 
of which straggle for mile after mile along the roads. 

The inhabitants of Rumania number about seventeen 
and a half millions almost all of whom belong to a race 
distinct from their neighbours. Russia is Slavic, Poland 
is Slavic, and so are Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and 
Bulgaria. The Hungarians are Magyars, but they come 
from the slopes of the Caucasus and have no kinship with 
the Rumanians. 

These people take their name from old Rome and claim 
that their blood is richly mixed with that of the Romans 
who overran this part of the world about one hundred years 
after Christ and established a great colony at the mouth 
of the Danube. They conquered the Dacians, who were 
then living here and who are mentioned in all the early 
Roman histories. The Dacia of the Romans was larger 
than the Rumania of to-day. The conquerors imposed 
their language upon the people and the tongue used to-day 
is Latin rather than Slavic, though it has some Slavic 
words in it. It shows a kinship to Italian, Spanish, 

235 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

Portuguese, and French. It is said that when Ruman¬ 
ians go to Italy they can master the language within a few 
weeks. 

The people here are proud of their Roman origin and 
the founders of Rome are among their national heroes. 
One of the monuments of Bucharest is a great bronze she- 
wolf, with the two naked babies, Romulus and Remus, 
feeding away, and a similar picture is engraved on the 
back of some of the paper currency. 

Though conquered again and again, the nation has 
always striven to maintain its own institutions and its 
own tongue. When the Germans dominated the country 
from 1848 to 1867, they tried to introduce the German 
language and culture and the Hungarians attempted to 
Magyarize the Rumanians of Transylvania. Neverthe¬ 
less, Rumanian is now spoken by more than half the 
population and is the official language of the realm. I 
like it. It is one of the softest and most mellifluous 
speeches of the world, but nevertheless some of the aris¬ 
tocrats here will use only French, English, or German. 
I dine every day in the restaurant of a fashionable club 
where the waiters speak French and English, and I hear 
that many of the well-to-do families of Bucharest converse 
with each other only in French. The highest priced nurses 
are those who speak English. 

And this brings me to the matter of class distinctions. 
Before the World War the Rumanians were divided into 
two great classes: a small rich one, which owned most of 
the country, lived in great luxury, and had money to fling 
away; and a very large one which either had only tiny 
patches of land or toiled for the nabobs. Prior to 1918, 
more than nine million acres, or half of the cultivated 
236 


GREATER RUMANIA 


lands, were owned by one thousand proprietors and the 
other half belonged to six and a half million peasants. 
There was practically no middle class. Many of the 
aristocrats lived in Paris and their estates were managed 
by agents, mostly Jews, who sent the profits out of the 
country. 

The government was an oligarchy, which to a large 
extent it is to-day. There are nominal elections but 
they mean only the ousting of one group of aristocrats so 
that another group may have a chance. Thus the peas¬ 
ants are still ground between the upper and nether mill¬ 
stones of the aristocracy. I am told that this condition is 
rapidly changing, however, and it is safe to say that in 
a generation or so we shall see a gulf less wide between 
the white-collared, silk-shirted politician and the fur- 
capped, cotton-trousered peasant. 

The basis of the old aristocracy was land. Before 
the war many of the great estates covered tens of thousands 
of acres. On some of them the people were practically 
serfs, and on many the owners did not farm the lands but 
gave them over to peasants who paid money rents or 
half the produce. The peasants owned most of the live¬ 
stock, they furnished most of the ploughs and other tools, 
and they erected a large part of the buildings. 

When the great revolution overturned the nobility in 
Russia and Bolshevism seemed about to sweep over 
Rumania, the aristocrats, realizing that this would mean 
their total destruction, passed laws for parcelling out much 
more land to the peasants. Only a small portion was to 
be reserved to the nobles. In all, more than five million 
acres, a tract about as large as Massachusetts, has been 
carved out of the estates exceeding twelve hundred acres, 
237 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

and this is being distributed among the non-landholders 
and small farmers. In some of the provinces the size of 
the holdings that may be retained by the rich is limited 
to two hundred and fifty acres, and the allotments vary 
according to the character of the country. 

Of course, all the land taken from the nobles is supposed 
to be paid for, but the prices are figured on pre-war 
valuations and often on a paper rather than a gold basis. 
In fact, in most of the payments no real money passes, 
the government giving the former owner of the land long¬ 
time government bonds which may or may not be paid in 
the future. The land allotted to the peasant upon pay¬ 
ment of the government prices is limited to small tracts of 
from twelve to eighteen acres. A great deal of the land 
taken over by the government formerly belonged to the 
churches, the Orthodox Church owning by far the most. 


238 



This boy’s father is now owner of a part of the great estate on which 
he used to work almost as a serf. The Rumanian government has divided 
the vast holdings of the Magyar nobles in Transylvania and put them 
in the hands of the peasants. 








For wages of fifteen cents a day, women scoop black muck out of the 
oil pools and do all sorts of rough and dirty work shoulder to shoulder with 
the men, who get paid twice as much. 






CHAPTER XXXI 
IN Rumania's oil fields 

I MAGINE hundreds of gigantic oil derricks, black 
toothpicks as tall as a ten-story building reared up 
on the plain. Back of them picture mighty moun¬ 
tains cutting the sky, and in front the grain-laden 
lowlands through which the Danube is flowing to the sea! 

Between hills of black sand tossed up in all sorts of 
shapes, black oil is oozing out, forming black streams 
and pools. Here and there are clusters of round iron 
tanks, fifty feet high, each holding tens of thousands of 
barrels of petroleum. Iron pipes of all sizes lie on the 
ground, and donkey engines are pumping and baling. A 
myriad of dirty men and women are toiling away at all 
sorts of strange jobs. 

These are some of the features of the oil fields of Ru¬ 
mania, of which the town of Ploesti, where I am writing, 
is the centre. Rumania holds sixth place among the great 
oil producers. She is now taking out almost two barrels 
of every hundred produced in the world and the bulk of 
her output comes from this little region where 1 am to-day. 

The petroleum deposits lie in three zones. One is in 
Maramuresch, in the basin of the Tisza River. Another 
is in the Valcea district, but the most important is that of 
Prahova, which is within two hours by motor of Bucharest 
and on the southern foothills of the Carpathian Moun¬ 
tains. Here, in a region ten miles wide and a hundred 
239 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

miles long, are something like one thousand oil wells, 
which are producing from seven to nine million barrels of 
oil a year. 

The oil is in great pools, scattered throughout this 
strip. There are about ten fields, the most important 
of which is the Moreni-Tuicani field, the one I describe 
here. It is a small territory. Put it all together, and it 
would not cover more than four one-hundred-acre farms. 
Nevertheless, it yields about fifty per cent, of Rumania s 
production and is the great centre of her oil activity 
to-day. 

The city of PloBti is in the heart of the oil-producing 
territory. The fields run in a great semi-circle round it, 
covering an area of perhaps forty square miles, and the oil 
is piped here to be refined. There are a dozen or more 
refineries, the largest of which has a capacity of twenty 
thousand barrels per day. You can see the tank farms on 
every side of the city, and the sweetish smell of petroleum 
fills the air. Of the more than one hundred companies 
operating here, the Standard Oil has the best refinery. 
Its machinery is all new, for it was built after the World 
War. 

The oil formations of Rumania are different from 
those of the United States. In America the deposits lie 
mostly in rocky strata so hard that the stone does not 
come up with the oil and the crude petroleum readily 
flows out or is pumped to the surface. Here, the deposits 
are from twelve hundred to three thousand feet below the 
surface and are mixed with sand as fine as flour and with the 
natural gas that permeates the whole mass. When oil is 
struck the gas forces the sand out with the petroleum. 
Sometimes for several hours or even for days nothing but 
240 


IN RUMANIA’S OIL FIELDS 


sand will come, and then follows the mixture of oil and 
sand. Even after the wells have been producing for a long 
time, there is so much sand mixed with the oil that it is 
impossible to pump it. Eor this reason, when the wells 
stop flowing the oil is taken out by baling. A long baling 
bucket, such as is used in making an artesian well, is 
lowered by electricity or steam into the well, allowed to 
fill with the oil and sand mixture, and then raised and 
emptied. The bucket is as big around as a quart measure 
and sometimes as high as a five-story house, so that it 
brings up several barrels at each dip. With a baler fifty 
feet long as many as five hundred barrels of oil are thus 
raised in one day. 

Getting the oil out of the sand is a tough problem. 
From a flowing well there pours forth a hot mush as 
thick as molasses, as black as ink, and loaded with these 
fine rock particles. The mass is run into a great vat 
half the size of a city lot, below which are a half-dozen 
other tanks arranged in terraces. In the first vat much 
of the sand sinks to the bottom before the oil passes on 
through holes an inch or so in diameter into the second 
vat. There more sand is dropped, and the product grows 
purer and purer as it flows on through vat after vat until 
at the last one it contains no sand at all and can be pumped 
off through pipes into the storage tanks. 

As the black stuff issues from the well it deposits much 
sand around the edges. This is scooped up by bare-legged, 
bare-footed women, standing ankle deep and often calf 
deep in the hot, slimy mixture and ladling it out with 
scoops into holes or little pits on the banks of the pool. 
Other girls lift the mush from these pools to pools just 
above. The oil drains out as they do so and finally, at the 


24 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

top of the line, perhaps ten or fifteen feet above the great 
pool below, women raise the now almost clean sand and 
empty it into a steel car in which it is carried away to the 
sand pile. In the field 1 have been describing there were 
hundreds of derricks, each over an oil well, and here, there, 
and everywhere among them, were veritable mountains 
of sand, all of which had been lifted out in this way. 

1 asked about the wages of the girls, who do most of 
the work in the oil fields, and was told that they got fifteen 
cents for a working day of eight hours, or less than two 
cents an hour for their backbreaking labour. The men 
get more than the women. Drillers draw as much as 
seventy-five cents a day, while the common labourer sel¬ 
dom receives more than twenty or thirty cents. Yet the 
cost of living is low and the people think they do well to 
get these wages. Their labour is nothing like so efficient 
as that of the unskilled workers of the United States. 

The fact that the sand is mixed with the oil entails 
drilling difficulties that we do not have in the United 
States. The sand is as sharp as the particles of a carborun¬ 
dum grindstone and cuts like diamond dust. When a 
gusher is struck, the mush-like mixture comes out with 
such force that it sometimes saws its way through iron 
and steel. It will also spray over a large part of the 
surrounding country, and it is for this reason that the 
derricks are not left open as in the United States, but 
boarded in from top to bottom. In order to break the 
force of the geyser of oil and sand, a screen of steel rails is 
hung about twenty feet above the mouth of the well. 
Alternate rails are inverted and the whole makes a solid 
steel ceiling. But the oil sand flies against this in such a 
blast that it cuts right through the steel in the space of 
242 



Nearly nine tenths of the Rumanians live on the land. In the typical 
peasant house a broad bench serves as a bed for the women and children, 
while the men sleep outdoors or on the floor. 




Millions of dollars of American money have been invested in the 
Rumanian oil fields, which rank sixth among the petroleum-producing re¬ 
gions of the world. The oil here is difficult to handle because it is mixed 
with sand. 






IN RUMANIA’S OIL FIELDS 


eight hours or less. Sometimes a cap of iron, or a flowell, 
weighing three tons, is poised above the well, yet the sand 
bites through it. 

I stopped now and then to watch the drilling. On 
account of the sand the wells are never shot here with 
dynamite or other explosives, as with us. The drilling is 
further complicated by the different degrees of density 
of the various strata, which cause the earth to slide in 
much the same way as it does along the Panama Canal. 
This slipping forces the drill out of the perpendicular, 
often to such an extent that a second hole must be put 
down or the bent drill cut through and the hole extended. 
The soft earth formations add to the difficulty of putting 
down the casings. In a deep well the pipe sunk at the top 
may be twenty-five inches in diameter, or so big that a 
four-hundred-pound hog could crawl through it. After 
some distance a smaller casing is run down from the top 
and the drilling continued, the hole growing smaller and 
smaller until the casing that strikes the oil is perhaps so 
small that a cat could not run through it. 

A queer feature of the Moreni field is a huge wedge 
of salt, which runs east and west, with the oil on two 
sides of it. It is a mile or so wide at the point and 
broadens out as it extends from the hills to the plains. 
The deposit goes down no one knows how far. It has 
been drilled to a depth of more than a half mile from the 
surface, yet the bottom has not been reached. 

Standing on the apex I could see the great black derricks 
forming long lines on the sides of the wedge. Som¬ 
breness is a feature of the Rumanian oil fields. The pitchy 
black sand and the oil spray paint everything the colour 
of jet. The buildings are black, the machinery is black, 
243 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

and even the ground is of a rich, dark hue. In walking I 
had to watch my step lest I sink to my shoe tops in one of 
the oil swamps here and there. I had to be especially 
careful as I had an appointment to lunch with the Queen 
on the following day and had no other shoes than those on 
my feet. 

Among gold miners there is a common saying that the 
gold is where you find it. It is much the same with oil. 
For centuries petroleum has been mined in a small way in 
different parts of Rumania. It was first exploited com¬ 
mercially in 1857, two years before the Drake well was 
put down in the United States and opened the story of 
profitable oil production in America. For a long time the 
wells were dug by hand and big basins about fifteen feet 
square and fifty feet deep were made to hold the oil. In the 
beginning the diggers were not able to go below one hun¬ 
dred and fifty feet, and as they went down they used to 
drop snow into the wells to purify the air. At least they 
claimed this purified it. Later, wells were sunk by hand to 
six or even eight hundred feet and the oil sands were 
washed in great wooden vessels half filled with water. 
The water separated the sand from the oil, which floated 
on the surface. Later still, the oil was hauled out in 
wooden barrels by horses hitched to windlasses. Some¬ 
times ox skins were used to raise the petroleum just as 
they are even now used in northern India to lift water 
for irrigation. 

After the foreign drillers came in, prospecting went on 
everywhere and new fields were discovered. Among those 
tested was this Moreni field, and that notwithstanding the 
advice of Doctor Nerasic, the head of the Geological In¬ 
stitute of Rumania. The learned doctor said that there 


244 


IN RUMANIA’S OIL FIELDS 


was so little chance of finding oil in Moreni that he would 
agree to drink every quart taken out of the region. Never¬ 
theless, as I have said, the Moreni field is producing more 
than half the output of the whole country, and it will yield 
this year something like four million barrels. 

In closing this chapter, I want to say a word or so 
about the Standard Oil Company in Rumania, whose in¬ 
vestments here amount to upwards of twenty million 
dollars. It was one of the first foreign companies to aid in 
establishing the industry and to-day it does a business 
larger than any other company in the field, with the ex¬ 
ception, perhaps, of the Royal Dutch Shell. 

I have gone over its works, which are marvels of effi¬ 
ciency and modern machinery in a land where most of the 
methods are crude in the extreme. It has a force of high- 
class men and the American colony here at Ploesti is a re¬ 
freshing oasis in this great desert of southwestern Europe. 
On the outskirts of the town the company has some thou¬ 
sands of acres on which it has built up a settlement that 
might be transplanted bodily to the best suburbs of any 
American city and not be out of place. Beautiful brick 
houses of two stories, facing well-kept lawns decorated with 
trees and flowers, extend for a mile on each side of a white 
macadamized roadway not far from the refineries. The 
colony has a good school and a clubhouse, tennis courts, 
ball grounds, and a large swimming pool filled with the 
purest spring water. Every family has a house to itself, 
and the homes are well furnished and equipped with hot 
and cold water and electric lights. The social life of the 
community is delightful, and I find none of the people 
anxious to leave. 


245 


CHAPTER XXXII 

AT THE queen’s TABLE 

Hurray/' cried the kitten, “Hurray!'* 
As he merrily set the sails, 

“ 1 sail o'er the ocean to-day 
To look at the Prince of Wales." 


“But, kitten," 1 cried, dismayed, 

“If you lived through the angry gales. 

Surely you’d be afraid 

To look at the Prince of Wales!" 

Said the kitten, “No such thing. 

Why should he make me wince? 

If a cat may look at a King, 

A kitten may look at a Prince." 

—Oliver Her ford. 

I HAVE just returned from the Royal Castle at Sinaia, 
the summer palace of the King of Rumania, where I 
have had the honour of lunching with their Majesties, 
King Ferdinand and Queen Marie, and of meet¬ 
ing the beautiful young Princess Ileana. 

The palace is a home-like building of three or four 
stories, with roofs as sharp as a knife blade and white 
walls inlaid in patterns of varnished yellow pine. It has 
gables and spires and other Rumanian architectural con¬ 
ceits. It is in the midst of a wooded park covering hun¬ 
dreds of acres, and is reached by a twisting driveway up 
246 



In the heart of the Transylvanian Alps is Sinaia, summer capital of 
Rumania and chief resort of southeastern Europe. Society follows the 
King and Queen here each season and match-making and politics are 
carried on together. 






The most beautiful queen in Europe has made Rumania the leader 
among the Balkan states. When at her summer palace she usually wears 
the embroidered peasant costume, with jewels worth a small fortune. 




AT THE QUEEN^S TABLE 

the mountain from Sinaia, the summer capital here in the 
heart of the Transylvanian Alps. The castle looks as if it 
were a part of the hills that tower over it. The entrance is 
under a carved porte-cochere and the front doors open 
into a great hall leading into a square salon from which 
stairs of polished oak wind their way to the floors above. 
Portraits of the royal family hang on the walls. Books in 
a half-dozen different languages cover the tables. 

After 1 had talked for a time with the High Court 
Chamberlain, Doctor Misu, for many years Minister 
from Rumania to the Court of St. James's, the Queen 
tripped down the stairs with a long-haired black spaniel 
at her heels. When Doctor Misu introduced me she gave 
my hand a cordial grasp and we chatted awhile before the 
King appeared. 

Her Majesty was dressed in the Rumanian costume and 
looked strikingly handsome. Monarchs can never con¬ 
ceal their birth dates, which appear in the statistical 
annuals and in other books. Therefore, I know that 
Queen Marie is just about forty-eight, but she does not 
look it. She has a clear, fair complexion, beautiful blonde 
hair, and eyes as blue as the skies over the mountains 
that look down on her palace. Her hands are small 
and soft, but her grip is firm, and she greets her guests 
with delightful cordiality. 

From a photograph in my mind's eye let me give you a 
pen picture of Her Majesty in the costume of her country. 
Her head was covered with a long white veil thrown back 
from her high and rather broad forehead and hanging 
down over her shoulders almost to her knees. The veil 
was bound on with a fillet of soft green silk about two 
inches wide, which came midway down the forehead, and 
247 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

was fastened there with a magnificent pearl. Her gown 
was of white Rumanian linen embroidered with a sort of 
filigree work of red silk and gold thread in the artistic 
patterns for which the peasants of Transylvania are fa¬ 
mous. The full sleeves came to the wrist and were adorned 
with embroidery in patterns two inches square. About her 
waist and extending almost to the bottom of her gown was 
a rich red overskirt of a velvety silk so made that one could 
hardly tell whether it was composed of strings or plaited. 
The hem of the gown was covered with gold embroidery 
and just touched her shoes of white kid. About her waist 
was a wide belt with carved silver buckles as big as the 
palm of my hand, which she told me came from Dalmatia. 

For a luncheon the Queen does not, of course, dress as 
for her great evening functions. Nevertheless, she wore 
jewels worth the ransom of a half-dozen kings. From each 
of her little ears hung a pearl as big as a hickory nut, and 
about her neck was a great string of pearls, each of which 
would, 1 venture, pay the salary of a justice of the United 
States Supreme Court for several years. On her right 
wrist was a bracelet of diamonds, and above it a tiny 
platinum watch fastened on with a ribbon of black silk. 
Her fingers sparkled with rings, one of which was set with 
a huge diamond and a pigeon-blood ruby so big that the 
two stones covered the finger from the knuckle to the sec¬ 
ond joint. 

Queen Marie’s jewels are famous. She has a large 
collection, some of which came from her family in Russia 
and probably date back to her great-grandfather. Czar 
Alexander 1. Perhaps she has some, too, from her grand¬ 
mother, Queen Victoria. King Ferdinand has been lavish 
in his presents and she has bought pearls and diamonds 
248 


AT THE QUEEN’S TABLE 

since she came to the throne. She wears her jewels so that 
they do not look ostentatious, and to-day they seemed 
quite in harmony with the Sunday costume of her peasant 
subjects. 

Her Majesty is tall and stately and talks, walks, and 
acts the queen. Nevertheless, the woman—and she is a 
most womanly woman—shows in all she says and does 
and she has the faculty of putting one perfectly at ease. 
She is frank in her conversation and before and during the 
luncheon she spoke without reserve about herself, the war, 
and the future of her country. She is a woman of great 
breadth of intellect. She knows the world well and 
central Europe as you know the palm of your hand. Now 
she talked about Russia, now about Germany and Poland, 
and again about Albania, Dalmatia, Bulgaria, Greece, and 
Serbia. She mentioned the last two countries in connec¬ 
tion with her children, two of whom are married into the 
royal family of Greece, and one of whom is the wife of 
Alexander, King of Yugoslavia. 

I remember her telling a story about her reply to some¬ 
one who referred to her as a ''Business Queen.” It was just 
after she had married one of her daughters to the Crown 
Prince of Greece, and the King of Greece had sent his 
daughter to Rumania to marry her son, Carol, the Crown 
Prince of Rumania. She said: 

" 1 object to the title of ' Business Queen.’ 1 am not 
in business and my life is a simple one. Indeed the only 
business that can be charged against me just now is that 
of meddling in our foreign commerce. 1 have been ex¬ 
porting a daughter to Athens and importing a Greek 
daughter to marry my son.” 

There is no doubt, however, that Her Majesty has a 

249 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

shrewd mind. She has a brilliant imagination and one of 
her visions is a great future for Rumania. She wants to 
see the country progress economically and every foreign 
capitalist who comes to Bucharest or Sinaia is shown 
Rumania's immense resources and possibilities through the 
Queen’s rose-coloured glasses. 

She may object to the expression, but it seems to me 
that in the best sense of the word Queen Marie is one of the 
most businesslike of rulers. She would sacrifice herself at 
any time for her country and she has again and again 
proved herself the "'great mother” of her subjects by striv¬ 
ing always after things that will better their condition. 
The story of her work during the war is a part of Rumanian 
history. She went out to the field and worked with the 
wounded. She organized hospitals, and no Red Cross 
nurse put in more hours of good hard labour. At the 
same time she brought her common sense and practical 
suggestions to the aid of the administration and raised 
money in every possible way. 

Queen Marie has a contempt, 1 imagine, for the monarch 
who is only a figurehead in the government of his people. 
She has a forceful personality and is ambitious to rank with 
such women as Queen Elizabeth, Maria Theresa, and 
Catherine the Great of Russia. Her charming daughter, 
the Princess Ileana, seems to have the same bent. Once, 
when there was talk of Poland’s being ruled by a king, the 
future monarch was suggested as a possible husband for 
the Princess Ileana. When asked what she thought of the 
idea, she replied: 

"I don’t know that I would object. Poland is prac¬ 
tically a new country and the queen there would have 
plenty to do. I think I might like it.” 

250 


AT THE QUEEN’S TABLE 

And this reminds me of the story I heard in Bucharest 
of how Her Majesty declined the opportunity of becoming 
the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of 
India. It was when she was sweet sixteen—she must have 
been very beautiful then—and had only the title of Prin¬ 
cess Mary. She is, you know, the daughter of the Duke of 
Edinburgh, Queen Victoria’s second son, and is conse¬ 
quently first cousin of King George V of England. She 
and George were playmates and friends. George was the 
second son of Edward VH, then Prince of Wales, and as 
his older brother, the Duke of Clarence, was living, he 
was not the lineal heir to the throne. At the Isle of Wight, 
Prince George asked the Princess Mary to be his wife. 
She refused him, and later on he married the present Queen. 
Then, his brother having died, he fell heir to the British 
throne. Had Princess Mary accepted, Rumania would 
lack what is now one of her most valuable assets. 

I shall not describe our meal in detail. It was formally 
served by men in the blue uniforms with silver buttons 
of the palace livery. The room where we lunched was, I 
judge, about fifty feet long and twenty feet wide and the 
dining table ran from one end almost to the other. It was 
covered with a cloth of damask, and there were no flowers 
except sweet peas of a delicate pink which were strewn 
over the cloth here and there. 

Lunch began with appetizers in the way of salads of 
tomatoes and cucumbers, sardines, and bird-shot caviar, a 
teaspoonful of which was served in the hard white of the 
half of a boiled egg. The black caviar looked most at¬ 
tractive against the white background of the egg. After 
the hors d'ceuvres we had fish from the Danube, roast veal, 
vegetables, a lettuce salad, a dessert of pink ice, and small 
251 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

cups of smoking hot Turkish coffee as black as ink, as thick 
as molasses, and almost as sweet. 

There were sixteen at the table, the King and the 
Queen sitting on opposite sides in the centre, with the 
guests on their right and left. I was second from King 
Ferdinand, and within six feet of Queen Marie who was 
almost directly across the table from me. Her Majesty 
talked throughout the meal, which lasted for more than 
an hour, eating heartily the while. 

After we had finished, a silver alcohol lamp, of a beauti¬ 
ful ancient Roman design, was placed before the Queen. 
She took a cigarette and lighted it from the flame, raising 
the lamp to the level of her nose as she did so. She smoked 
vigorously, and it seemed to me that she liked it. Some¬ 
times she talked with the cigarette in her mouth. The lamp 
was next passed to the King, after which it went around 
the table. 

There was no stiffness whatever in the conduct of the 
luncheon. The Queen’s black spaniel trotted about under 
the table, and for some reason picked me out as his friend. 
He came up and rested his head on my knees, and I sur¬ 
reptitiously fed him bits of bread while the Queen 
chatted. 

Her Majesty might be called the Queen of the Fairies. 
She is that to the children of Rumania, and to the multi¬ 
tude of other children who delight in the fairy stories she 
writes, some of which have been filmed. During luncheon 
the question of authorship came up and Queen Marie 
spoke of her pleasure in creative work. She has written 
a number of magazine articles and not a few books, re¬ 
minding me of Carmen Sylva, the literary Queen whom 
she succeeded. 


252 


AT THE QUEEN’S TABLE 

Queen Marie tells me she delights in writing for children. 
She says their imaginations are much more vivid than 
those of the grown-ups, and that they appreciate every 
shade of thought. She has published many stories for 
children, and upon my telling her that I would like to 
show one of these to the boys and girls of America she said 
that she would give me a copy of “The Story of Naughty 
Kildeen,” one of her books that came out in France some 
years ago. 

While we were discussing this book, the Princess Ileana 
came into the room and was presented to us. The Princess 
is as straight as an arrow, graceful, and most intelligent. 
She speaks English fluently and has, I doubt not, a half- 
dozen languages on the tip of her tongue. She was dressed 
in a richly embroidered peasant costume, and had a bright 
silk handkerchief bound round her head. Her mother sent 
her to get a copy of “Naughty Kildeen” and bring it to me. 

In all this 1 have not said much of King Ferdinand, 
for I was especially interested in the Queen and at such 
times kings do not count. His Majesty came into the re¬ 
ception hall shortly after Queen Marie, and shook hands 
with his guests. He was dressed in the uniform of a 
Rumanian general, wearing an olive-drab suit with a Sam 
Browne belt. He wore tan boots that reached to his knees 
and had silver spurs at the heels. His breast was plastered 
with decorations. 

King Ferdinand is well-built and of medium height, 
and looks somewhat like a club man of studious tempera¬ 
ment. He is shy rather than ostentatious. His voice is 
low, his manner decidedly pleasing, and his conversation 
at table showed genuine devotion to his people and their 
country. 


253 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

As the summer capital of Rumania Sinaia has a gay 
social life centring about the King and Queen. It is the 
playground of the rich. Situated in a valley of the Tran¬ 
sylvanian Alps, as high as the tops of the Alleghanies, with 
great wooded hills rising a half mile or so above it, this 
is one of the beauty spots of the world. Indeed, it might 
be called the Simla of Rumania, or better, perhaps, of 
southeastern Europe. 

Here one may see dandified young men in soft flannels 
playing tennis with beautiful young women in lavishly em¬ 
broidered blouses, with bright-coloured silks tied around 
their heads. Near by are other women down on their 
knees weeding the lawn of a park, or tossing bricks to 
masons putting up a new building. There are indeed two 
sides of life at Sinaia. 

Let us walk through the park. It is surrounded by 
big hotels of dead white, with sharply ridged roofs of 
red tiles. Behind, climbing the hills and extending up 
the mountains, are white villas, far more picturesque than 
the chateaus in the Swiss Alps. Near a pool filled with 
goldfish a band in military uniforms of delicate blue, 
black leather boots, and broad green hats turned up at 
the side with feathers, is playing such music as one hears 
only near the Danube. Sitting on the benches or strolling 
about are wealthy women in gorgeous gowns, and peasant 
women in homespun with their heads tied up as if they 
had toothache. There are dandies dressed to the nines; 
officers in gay uniforms, decorated with gold braid; Ru¬ 
manian flappers, adipose dames in rich clothing, and fat old 
men ogling the young women. Truly, the Rumanian 
girls are among the fair ones of the world; their forms are 
as graceful and voluptuous as that of the goddess of love. 

254 



One can trace in the lovely dark eyes and hair of the Rumanian girls 
the Roman descent of which the people are so proud. After the gay spson 
at Bucharest the young men and maidens flock to Sinaia, with its mineral 
springs and baths and its fine hotels. 








In the big salon of the Casino there is dancing in the afternoons and 
evenings, and in the gambling room adjoining play goes on most of the 
time. High stakes are the rule. 



Under the trees of Sinaia’s outdoor restaurants gather the upper classes 
of Rumania. They wear the latest fashions of Paris and spend lavishly, 
for many own huge farms and are enormously rich. 







AT THE QUEEN’S TABLE 

Among the amusements at Sinaia are mountain climb¬ 
ing, tennis, riding horseback over the bridle paths, mo¬ 
toring, and driving. In the evening one strolls about 
through the parks and listens to the bands until time for 
dinner, which always begins about nine and lasts more than 
an hour. After that, there is dancing, to say nothing of 
gambling at the Casino. 

The Casino is a great, white, two-story building, 
with a large salon where the pleasure seekers drink tea 
and dance in the afternoon, and drink other things and 
dance in the evening. After the dance and before it, and 
in fact throughout most of the day, there is gambling. 
The gambling room adjoins the dance-hall, and both are 
connected with my hotel by a long underground tunnel. 

When I entered the Casino last night 1 found a half- 
dozen tables devoted to a card game known as chemin de 
fer, or railroad. Each was surrounded by men and women 
with piles of green and red chips before them, and there 
was a croupier sitting in the centre of one side holding a 
paddle of black wood as long as my arm and twice as wide 
as the palm of my hand. The paddle was almost as thin 
as an ivory paper cutter and as flexible as a sword from 
Damascus. With it the croupier scooped up the money 
or chips and tossed them from player to player, dropping 
down the winnings of the house beside him. 1 could tell 
from the expressions of the fat old Rumanian dames 
watching the cards with their bulbous eyes whether they 
were winning or losing. Some of the younger men and 
women also were decidedly nervous, and I venture many a 
good Rumanian acre is lost at this place. Before leaving 
I was approached by a dark-eyed young woman who 
invited me to learn the game, and told me how much some 

255 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

Americans had made at the tables. But it was after ten 
and far past my bedtime, and I refused to join in. 

Sinaia is within a short distance of the Transylvanian 
border, and during my stay I have motored over the 
pass crossed by the military highway between the two 
countries. Transylvania, as you know, is a province 
that formerly belonged to Hungary but after the World 
War it was given over to Rumania. It is about half as 
large as the state of Pennsylvania, and has more than 
five hundred thousand Magyars, something like two 
hundred thousand Germans, and perhaps two million 
Rumanians, with a sprinkling of Ruthenians, Slovaks, and 
Jews thrown in for good measure. 

Travel through these mountains is delightful. We 
wound our way through valley after valley, frowned on by 
gigantic peaks, here covered with woods almost to their 
tops, there showing rocks that look like castles and forts. 
On the Rumanian slopes the peasant houses are more 
picturesque than those on the Transylvanian side. The 
Rumanian houses are always whitewashed and often the 
whitewash is decorated in the brightest blue. Frequently 
stripes run down the sides or around the windows, and 
patterns of blue may be splattered here and there over the 
walls. This, I understand, is to keep away the Evil Eye. 

Many of the houses are roofed with red tiles, others 
with corrugated iron. They are often trimmed with 
carving and fretwork, and nearly every one has a porch. 
If there is an attic or second story, it is reached by out¬ 
side stairs. The houses are usually small, the average 
having but three rooms. The family all sleeps in one 
room, the women and girls on a bench, the men on the 
floor or the stove. The cooking is generally done out of 
256 


AT THE QUEEN^S TABLE 

doors or on a rude stone inside. In the yard of each house 
is a bake-oven, and sometimes a straw shack and a shed or 
two as well. 

In other sections of Rumania, the village homes have 
fenced yards in front of them. In Transylvania the houses 
are often crowded together close to the street as in Ger¬ 
many. The stables are at the back. The houses are of 
brick and stucco, and are unattractive. 

I wish you could see these peasants on Sunday, when 
they appear in their richly embroidered dresses. A village 
woman then wears one or two overdresses gorgeously 
embroidered in patterns of red, yellow, or blue. Her 
belt is embroidered in gold thread and even her commonest 
overskirt has a broad woven band of gold, silk, or wool 
thread, to which are hung long streamers of red or some 
other colour. The headdresses vary according to the 
region. Sometimes they are high caps and sometimes only 
handkerchiefs wrapped round the head. The women are 
fond of necklaces of silver and gold coins and they delight 
in bright belts. 

The embroidered garments are so pretty that they are 
eagerly bought by tourists, and many blouses and gowns 
are made for sale in the cities. In Sinaia one can get a 
beautiful blouse almost covered with embroidery for five 
dollars, and a gown almost any girl would be glad to wear 
at a party for ten or fifteen. 


257 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


CONSTANTINOPLE 

I HAVE come to Constantinople through the Black 
Sea and the Bosporus. Taking ship at Constanza 
in the delta of the Danube, I crossed from Rumania 
to Turkey in a Rumanian vessel. The Black Sea 
is more than five times the size of Lake Superior. It is 
nearly as big as the Baltic and its only outlet is the Bos¬ 
porus Strait, nineteen miles long and from a half mile to 
two miles in width, which connects it with the Sea of 
Marmora and the Mediterranean. We left Constanza at 
night and the next morning found ourselves at the entrance 
of the winding strait separating Europe and Asia. 

The Bosporus is perhaps the most famous small body of 
water in all history. Its very name comes from a story in 
Greek mythology. Bosporus means ''ox ford” and the 
strait was so-called because the beautiful maiden lo, trans¬ 
formed into a cow by the jealous wife of Zeus and pursued 
by her wrath, fled across it from one continent to the other. 
We entered the strait near a point named Anchor Key, for 
the anchor that Jason found here when he and the Argo¬ 
nauts were seeking the Golden Fleece. On the European 
side is the giant mountain where Jason made sacrifices 
and built temples and where Darius, the great Persian 
king, stood and looked upon Europe. 

The Turks have a tradition that Joshua, the son of Nun, 
came to the Bosporus to live after he had conquered Ca- 
258 



The terraced streets of Constantinople are sometimes connected with 
each other by flights of stone steps, often lined with small shops. It is 
said the city grew up originally along paths worn in the hillsides by goats. 




The Turks say that Joshua, son of Nun, was so great a giant that 
when he sat on top of this hill and looked across the Bosporus to the 
shores of Europe, his feet touched the waters below. 



Constantinople is a city of more than a million people that seems to 
rise out of the sea. Its hills are crowned with domes and minarets, and 
its water front is always crowded with the shipping of Europe and Asia. 














CONSTANTINOPLE 


naan, and they show you his grave near a mosque on the 
mountain top. Their story represents Joshua as fre¬ 
quently standing astride the strait and letting the ships 
sail between his huge legs. He also loved, they say, to 
sit of an evening on the summit of the mountain and 
lave his feet in the water, which was more than two hun¬ 
dred yards below him. 

While we waited for the quarantine officers to look us 
over, we anchored under the mountain at the town 
of Kevak, not far from some Standard Oil tanks, then 
wound our way down the Bosporus, between the villas 
and villages that dot both the Asiatic and the European 
shores. There are many hotels rising from the waters, 
and here and there we saw palaces built by the sul¬ 
tans. The biggest of all is Dolma-Baghcheh, which 
stretches for more than a third of a mile along the strait, 
its white marble facade gleaming in the sun. It was 
built some seventy years ago and the architect's only 
instructions were to erect a royal palace more splendid 
than the sultan of that day had ever beheld. Yet, in spite 
of its magnificence, it fell into disfavour after one sultan 
committed suicide and another went insane within its 
gorgeous walls, and it is whispered that the place is 
haunted. It was here that the Caliph Abdul-Medjid, 
the last of the line of Osman, was told that he must 
leave Turkey for ever. 

From the Black Sea to Constantinople the Bosporus is 
walled with hills. I noticed castles on some of the heights 
and both shores seem fairly well settled. The country 
appeared ragged and rough, but many of the villas had 
beautiful gardens. Everywhere were signs of the poverty 
of the Turks. All the buildings lacked paint and the 
259 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

windows were like bleary eyes looking out of faded faces. 
Here and there were new and well-kept structures, among 
them some buildings flying the American flag. One of 
these flags belonged to Robert College, the greatest 
educational and westernizing institution in this part of the 
world, and another flew over the American College for 
Women, which holds the place in the Near East that 
Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley have in our country. 

As we neared Constantinople, the waters were filled 
with shipping. There were great steamers lying in the 
harbour and hundreds of caiques, the famous canoe-like 
boats of the Turk, were being rowed about. There were 
barges loaded with lumber and other cargoes, and ferry¬ 
boats filled with commuters, red-fezzed passengers travel¬ 
ling back and forth from their homes on the strait. There 
are fifteen different stops on the Bosporus and the Prince's 
Islands, and morning and evening the boats are packed 
like the ferries of New York. 

Coming down the strait we had a fine view of this great 
city of more than a million, with its hundreds of minarets 
cutting the sky and standing out like so many white pins 
on a huge cushion of green. The city seems to rise from 
the edge of the sea. Its hills are crowned with mighty 
mosques, some of which cover acres, and from the minarets 
the shrill tenor voices of the muezzins calling the hours of 
prayer ring out across the water. 

Constantinople is divided into three parts. Galata and 
Pera form one section. Here most of the foreigners live, 
modern business has its headquarters, and the sultans 
had many of their palaces. In Scutari the most fanatical 
of the Turks have their homes, and there, after the World 
War, tens of thousands of refugees were cared for by the 
260 


CONSTANTINOPLE 


American doctors and nurses of the Near East Relief. 
Stamboul is the most important part of the city. It con¬ 
tains the bulk of the Mohammedan population and all the 
great mosques. In Stamboul are the bazaars, the Sublime 
Porte, the headquarters of the Turkish Empire before the 
new government was instituted at Angora, and in short 
everything that is essentially Turkish. Stamboul is 
separated from Pera and Galata by the Golden Horn, 
a deep inlet about a mile wide where it joins the Bosporus, 
but narrowing as it curves in between the two cities and 
goes back into the country to meet the stream called the 
Sweet Waters of Europe. 

The bridge of boats over the Golden Horn, connecting 
European Constantinople with Moslem Stamboul, is one 
of the most remarkable bridges of the world. It surpasses 
in interest the Rialto in Venice, upon which Shylock 
bargained with Antonio for his pound of flesh; Brooklyn 
Bridge, that great cob-web of steel joining New York and 
Long Island, or even the Thames Bridge in London, which 
bears perhaps more traffic than any bridge in the world. 
It is said that three hundred thousand people and not more 
than one idea cross the Galata Bridge every day. 

It is the throng that makes it so remarkable; for here is 
presented a moving picture of humanity such as one can 
see in few other places on earth. Stand beside me midway 
between Stamboul and Pera and a hundred feet above 
the waters of the Golden Horn. Of the more than a 
million inhabitants of Constantinople only about one half 
are Turks, and the rest of the population is made up of 
Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and all the strange characters 
you will find in this part of the world. There are tens of 
thousands of Jews. Here comes one now. He is dressed 
261 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

in a black gown and from each side of his fur cap hangs 
a long curl, showing that he belongs to that crowd of 
Spanish Jews whose forefathers came here when they 
were driven by persecution from Spain. Behind him 
struts a Greek Catholic monk, and on the other side of 
the bridge is a dervish whose Arab features are crowned 
with a high tan-coloured cap, which stands fully a foot 
above his head and looks like an inverted tumbler. The 
dervish wears a long black gown and his face has numerous 
scars, for he belongs to a sect of fanatics that mutilate 
themselves in their religious ecstasy. 

Among the next passers-by are two flabby-faced eunuchs 
as black as the charcoal in the basket being carried by the 
porter behind them. Each has a stick in his hand and 
both talk in shrill, piping voices as they pass. Notwith¬ 
standing the decrease in the harems, eunuchs are still to 
be seen in Constantinople. Those men are probably going 
on errands for the wives of some bey whom they guard. 

Behind the eunuchs is a Circassian, a big man with a 
black beard, whose breast is covered with cartridge boxes. 
His clothes are half European, he has a dagger in his belt, 
and he wears the uniform of a soldier. With him is a 
Greek, dressed in ballet-girl costume. 

At each end of the Galata Bridge are Turkish officials, 
who are supposed to collect a small sum from all who pass 
across, from the pasha and the bey to the porter and the 
beggar. Not long ago, when the taxes were raised, the 
women, who had previously been exempt, were included 
among those who must pay toll. But they refused to 
do so. This put the officials in an embarrassing pre¬ 
dicament, for according to the Turkish idea a man's 
wife or daughter is his own special property and no 
262 



When the Ahmedieh Mosque was completed, there was an outcry 
because it had the same number of minarets as the mosque at Mecca. 
So the Sultan added another spire to the shrine at Mecca, thus leaving the 
A.hmedieh the only mosque in the world with six minarets. 











The porters are the common carriers of Constantinople, and hundreds 
of them may be seen on the Galata Bridge any day. These men are so 
strongly unionized that for generations they have maintained a monopoly 
of the transport business. 






CONSTANTINOPLE 


other man may lay hands upon her. Therefore, the tax 
collectors dare not interfere with the woman who goes on 
her way without paying toll. 

Most striking of all of the characters on the bridge are 
the hamals, or porters. The hamal of Constantinople 
belongs to a union in which membership is passed on from 
father to son. Boys begin to carry burdens at eight and 
ten years of age and they are still carrying them when their 
hair is white at three score and ten. Here comes a hamal 
with a load of boards big enough for a mule. I am told 
that a porter will take a length of eight-inch iron pipe up 
the hills of Stamboul on his back. See those three men, 
each with a three-bushel basket full of watermelons 
fastened to his shoulders. The melons are held in by a 
net over the top. Other porters are bent double under 
dry-goods boxes, tables, stools, even upright pianos and 
beds. These porters are the ash collectors of the city. 
I see them every morning toiling up to the dumps, which 
lie between my hotel window and the Golden Horn. To 
protect his back the hamal wears a triangular saddle, or 
padded cushion of leather, with a projection at the bottom 
to prevent the load from slipping. 

As I write these notes my guide grabs my arm and jerks 
me out of the roadway. A caravan of camels is coming 
and one of these ill-natured beasts might bite me as he 
passes. This caravan is led by a man with a donkey, 
which the guide says is a common custom throughout the 
country. To my surprise, the camels pay no attention 
to the automobiles. Behind them are mules with pan¬ 
niers, bringing in stuff from the country, and amid the 
traffic are horses, and even the black, ugly water-buffalo, 
half-hog and half-cow, drawing all sorts of vehicles. 

263 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

I notice the blue beads that hang in strings around the 
necks, across the foreheads, and on the tails of the beasts. 
Every animal has them to ward off the Evil Eye. This 
superstition has even extended to automobiles. When I 
was out yesterday I saw a car driven by a gowned and 
turbaned Turk, which had a strand of blue beads wrapped 
around the radiator cap at the front. The man was going 
like the wind and 1 doubt not he had implicit faith in the 
charm. 

Speaking of automobiles, these Turks have no speed 
laws and their driving is the most reckless 1 have ever seen. 
The main street of Pera is just wide enough for two cars 
to pass and the red-fezzed chauffeurs fly in and out at a 
speed that would get them arrested in any American city. 
Even the street cars are dangerous, for they come so close 
to the narrow sidewalks that their sides are apt to skin 
one’s legs as they pass. They go like mad and the ringing 
of their bells vies with the honking of the automobiles. 

Constantinople is a noisy city. Street peddlers shriek 
out their wares. The hamals yell to people to get out of 
their way. The pavements are of cobbles and every 
vehicle rattles. Right next my hotel is the Petit Champs, 
a garden where jazz music and singing keep up until 
three o’clock in the morning and where the after-midnight 
sights would disgust Vienna, Paris, or Berlin, in the days 
of their greatest degradation. 1 do not always sleep well 
and 1 try to drop off by keeping time to the music. At 
about 3:00 A.M. the din dies down and the city is quiet. 
But even then 1 hear theresonant sounds of the policeman’s 
club as he walks his beat, tapping the flag-stones every so 
often to warn the thieves of his coming and to show the 
city fathers that he is still on the job. 

264 


CHAPTER XXXIV 


THE NEW WOMAN IN TURKEY 

T he women of Turkey are coming out of their 
seclusion, going about with their faces uncov¬ 
ered, and learning to take a part in politics and 
business. When I was in Constantinople fifteen 
years ago, the poorer women wore veils so thick that you 
could not see through them, and only the high-class 
ladies of the harems had white gauze veils showing above 
their balloon-like black dresses. To-day the majority 
of those on the street have their faces perfectly bare and 
the veiled woman is the exception. The women still 
wear unsightly coverings over their heads, but these 
are drawn tight down around the sides of the face, so that 
all the features show. 

Even a few years ago, the better class Turkish girls 
wore veils when out driving, especially when going to such 
places as the Sweet Waters of Europe. Now they may 
be seen with uncovered faces, notwithstanding the many 
young men riding about in motor cars or on horseback. I 
see them often in the boats on the Golden Horn, their veils 
thrown back, and they do not hesitate to look at the men; 
in fact, they seem to want the men to notice them. Most 
of the women at functions of the higher classes are now 
without veils. At an official reception the other evening 
more than thirty young girls appeared wearing decollete 
gowns. This would haVe been impossible a few years ago. 
265 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

When during the World War the women went to the field 
and served as nurses, they began to take off their veils. 
Many of them joined the Red Crescent, which is the 
Turkish society of the Red Cross. Others did all sorts 
of war and relief work, and like the nurses, discarded their 
face coverings. 

Since the war, the employment of girls has been largely 
extended and unveiled women work in stores, operate type¬ 
writers, and run telephone switchboards. There is a dry 
goods establishment in Pera run entirely by women. Stam- 
boul has a department store where there are many women 
clerks. They are dressed in black but their faces are 
unveiled. There are unveiled women peddlers in the 
bazaars who called out to me as I passed to come in and 
buy. Unveiled girls of the higher class, with red ribbons 
across their breasts, stand on the corners asking alms for 
special charities. If you give, they will pin a protective tag 
on the lapel of your coat. Many of the Turkish women are 
going in for charitable work. Some run orphan asylums 
and hospitals. Women have recently been allowed to 
plead their own cases in the Turkish courts and in some 
instances have been successful. 

It used to be that husband and wife never appeared 
together on the streets and there was a law forbidding 
Turkish men and women to go to a public entertainment 
together, no matter if they were husband and wife, brother 
and sister, or mother and son. To-day I saw a dozen men 
and women walking together across the bridge leading 
from the European quarters to Stamboul, and some went 
arm in arm. Up to six years ago there was a statute pro¬ 
hibiting a man and woman from riding together in the same 
vehicle; now both sexes are often to be seen in the same 
266 


THE NEW WOMAN IN TURKEY 

motor car. The street cars still have compartments in 
front reserved for Turkish women. But there is a dis¬ 
tinction between Mohammedans and Christians. A Turk¬ 
ish woman may walk with a Turkish man, but her going 
about with a Christian may cause trouble. The Moham¬ 
medan women are not only attending the movies, but some 
of the educated girls are acting for the screen. Several 
are making a success at posing in all sorts of costumes. 

As to public entertainments, the new Magic Theatre 
has a special dispensation permitting a Turk to enter with 
his wife, but at most of the movies there is one section 
for the women and another for the men. The manager of 
one of the movies says he doesn’t like the women to patron¬ 
ize his house, for if a women comes alone she is stared at 
and if she has a man with her one of the old-fashioned 
Turks is likely to call the police. 

Constantinople has a weekly paper of large circulation, 
published by and for women. It is printed in the Arabic 
language, and among the illustrations are pictures of women 
advertising silk stockings and lingerie. The paper con¬ 
tains political articles, poetry, and fiction, and its chief 
aim is the advancement of women. 

I hear all sorts of talk about doing away with the 
harem and the establishment of monogamy as a national 
custom. Dr. Fuad Bey, formerly Minister of Health and 
Child Welfare, says that in a recent trip across Turkey 
he did not find any man with more than one wife and that 
the time will soon come when a law will be passed pro¬ 
hibiting plural marriage. However that may be, there 
are still harems all over Turkey, especially out in the 
country where the women do the work and are a labour as¬ 
set to their husbands. The Koran permits a man to have 
267 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

four wives and as many female slaves as he can support. 
Among the higher classes, each wife has a separate estab¬ 
lishment. The objections to polygamy are due not so 
much to conscientious scruples as to the additional expense 
in these days of the high cost of living, and to the inevi¬ 
table disquiet in a household of several wives. 

When I was here the first time, many years ago, I 
learned much about the harem of Sultan Mahmud 11. 
Upon his accession, in order to make his throne safe, he 
sewed up the one hundred and seventy-four wives of 
Mustafa IV in sacks loaded with shot and dropped them 
into the cool waters of the Bosporus. Abdul-Aziz, uncle 
of Abdul-Hamid, was especially fond of blue-eyed beau¬ 
ties with golden hair. He had twelve hundred slaves in 
his harem and it is said that his expenses for presents and 
dresses were about eight hundred thousand dollars a year. 
Abdul-Hamid had a big harem with scores of eunuchs to 
watch the women. His chief eunuch wore a uniform of 
scarlet and gold and built a mosque to serve as his tomb. 

The eunuchs formed but a small part of the staff of 
servants for the palace. It took something like seven 
thousand people to wait upon Abdul-Aziz. His kitchens 
had three hundred servants and there were one hundred 
porters who did nothing but carry burdens for the estab¬ 
lishment. All of his numerous wives had their servants, 
hairdressers, and dressmakers, and the most favoured had 
separate establishments with their own eunuchs, slaves, 
doctors, and cooks. 

At that time the buying and selling of women was 
secretly done and the Sultan’s establishment was often in¬ 
creased by girls from the Caucasus. Their value depended 
somewhat on their beauty and accomplishments, and the 
268 


THE NEW WOMAN IN TURKEY 

good singers and dancers brought the best prices. Then 
an ordinary slave girl of from twelve to sixteen years of 
age sold for two hundred dollars, and if very beautiful 
she might bring as much as two thousand. Sometimes the 
Sultan paid even as much as six thousand dollars. To-day 
the officials of the Republic say that there is no longer 
any buying and selling of women in Turkey, but this is 
denied and I am told it still goes on under the rose. 

One of the greatest influences for the advancement 
of women, not only in Turkey but in Rumania, Bulgaria, 
and other parts of the Near East, is the American College 
for Women, located on the Bosporus about five miles from 
the Golden Horn and within easy access of Constantinople. 
This institution was founded by Americans more than a 
generation ago and has been supported by generous gifts 
from many well-known people of the United States. 
Among these are Helen Gould, after whom Gould Hall, 
one of the fine buildings of the institution, is named. 
Another is Mrs. Russell Sage, who gave her name to Sage 
Hall. Gifts have also been received from John D. Rocke¬ 
feller, Mrs. Henry Woods, of Boston, Miss Grace Dodge, 
and others. 

The college was started at Scutari, on the Asiatic side 
of the Bosporus, but it is now on the hills of Europe 
looking out upon Asia and commanding a view up and 
down the strait. Its campus has more than a hundred 
acres of hill and hollow, and the walls under the great 
shade trees remind me of those at Oxford. The white 
stone buildings stand upon hills, rising perhaps one thou¬ 
sand feet from the Bosporus. The college has a centml 
heating plant, is lighted by electricity, and its laboratories 
and other equipment are equal to the best in our own 
269 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

colleges. The science laboratory at Woods Hall is the 
most modern and complete in this part of the world, and 
the Bingham Medical Building has laboratories, research 
rooms, and an operating theatre for medical students. 

The athletic ground of several acres has a hockey field, 
a running track, and a baseball court. Basket-ball, ten¬ 
nis, volley-ball, and all sorts of games are played. The 
girls are fond of athletics and for the most part they 
dress just like the girls of our colleges. On the athletic 
field they wear gymnasium suits, and 1 have photographs 
of these Mohammedan maidens making the four-hundred- 
yard dash, jumping the hurdles, and performing all sorts 
of muscular feats. They do them well, too, even though 
the Prophet Mohammed, if he could see them, would roll 
over in his grave. The girls also have a college theatre 
and some of them actually wear men’s clothes on the stage. 

The instruction compares favourably with that of 
Vassar, Smith, or Bryn Mawr. Many of the graduates be¬ 
come teachers and have for almost forty years been spread¬ 
ing our civilization throughout the Near East. I have 
met graduates of this college in all the countries from 
Austria to the Black Sea. They speak English fluently 
and are invariably a great force for good. Those that 
marry usually get the best of the Turks for their husbands. 

The common language of the college is English, though 
at times there are about twenty nations represented among 
the students. There are Slavs, Greeks, Latins, Hebrews, 
Tartars, Arabs, Persians, Armenians, and Anglo-Saxons. 
Each nation of the Balkans has its own language, but in 
Turkey, and especially in Constantinople, people living 
on the same streets and even in the same apartment house 
do not speak the same tongue. At the woman’s college 
270 



Though the modern Turkish woman has discarded the veil, she often 
wears the characteristic shawl and head-covering in one. The high cost 
of living and western ideas are killing polygamy. 




Overlooking the town built on the Bosporus by Mohammed II when 
he captured Constantinople are the buildings of Robert College, the 
American institution which Sultan Abdul Hamid said cost him his throne. 



Mohammed would probably turn in his grave if he knew the daughters 
of Islam were attending the American College for Women and engaging in 
the outdoor sports of the infidels. 






THE NEW WOMAN IN TURKEY 

each student studies as far as possible the language, 
literature, and history of her own nation, and this means 
that there are classes in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Slavic, 
Greek, Italian, Latin, German, and French. 

The college not only gives a first-class university educa¬ 
tion along American lines, but has two-year courses in 
commerce and agriculture, in home economics and normal 
training, and also in business. Many of the girls learn 
stenography in order to take positions as private secre¬ 
taries. Their wages are only twenty-five or thirty dollars 
a month at the start, but they are glad to earn the money. 
There is also a training school for nurses. 

Within the last year or so the girls of the college have 
been studying citizenship and political science. The 
students are governing themselves and they hold meetings 
conducted by parliamentary rules. They elect their own 
officers, much to the disgust of some of the students. 
Among the new arrivals of last year were some princesses 
from Russia and the Caucasus. One of these, a Georgian 
girl who had been accustomed to the homage of all about 
her, told one of the officers of the student government 
that she was a princess and not obliged to keep the rules. 
The officer replied: “We have no princesses here, and 
everybody must keep the rules.” 

The girls follow the woman's movement in other coun¬ 
tries. They are watching woman suffrage as it has been 
developing in Rumania and Bulgaria, and they would like 
to have it for Turkey. They have their own debating 
society where national affairs are freely discussed. Among 
the subjects of recent debates were “The Best Form of 
Government,” “Free Trade and Protection,” and “The 
Best Profession for Women.” 

271 


CHAPTER XXXV 


HERE AND THERE IN STAMBOUL 

O NE must cross the Golden Horn to Stamboul 
I to feel that he is at last in the Constanti- 
' nople of his imagination, the meeting-place of 
East and West, the great centre of Moham¬ 
medanism, and the heart of the old Turkish Empire. In 
its narrow, winding streets, Armenians, Persians, Greeks, 
Syrians, Jews, Turks, dervishes, and priests of every con¬ 
fession jostle each other, and one may hear almost every 
language and dialect spoken. In the bazaars the wares of 
the East, far and near, compete with goods from the mills 
of Manchester and the factories of Birmingham. 

The bazaars of Constantinople are the most famous of 
the world. The two best known are the Egyptian Bazaar 
and the Grand Bazaar, both of which are in Stamboul. 
The Egyptian Bazaar forms a street three hundred and 
fifty feet long and forty feet wide, in which are set out for 
sale coffee, gums, dates, spices, perfumes, opium, nuts, and 
dye stuffs. The Grand Bazaar has ninety-odd streets and 
houses and something like four thousand shops. 

But suppose we go and see for ourselves what it is like. 
We cross the Golden Horn, pass up the street from the 
Galata Bridge, turn to the right, and are soon in the 
maze of the great market. It is really a city within 
a city, with arcaded streets, alleys, lanes, and fountains, 
all enclosed within walls and covered over with a curving 
272 


HERE AND THERE IN STAMBOUL 

roof broken by a hundred cupolas. We enter one of the 
tunnel-like streets. It is dimly lighted by windows high 
up on the curve of the arch. The walls are yellow, but 
the arched roof is stencilled with blue and the whole has a 
cool effect. There are festoons of rugs and hundreds of 
hanging lamps. This tunnel is floored with cobbles, 
though there are others paved with asphalt. In each of 
the little cells looking out on the street sits a merchant 
waiting among his goods for customers. There is one 
with his turbaned head bent over a book on his lap; he 
is reading the Koran. I read my Bible sometimes but 
never while waiting for business. I wonder how many 
American merchants snatch the moments between sales 
to con the Testaments. 

Here is the leather bazaar with hundreds of merchants, 
each in his own cave-like establishment. On the walls 
and overhead hang great sheets of fine leather, black, 
white, and yellow. In the next tunnel is a shoe bazaar, 
the cells of which have shelves filled with red, black, and 
yellow shoes and slippers. In spaces often not more than 
four by six feet shoemakers are sitting, each with a stump¬ 
like stool before him, pounding leather or sewing away. 
One little Turkish boy in a red fez bows to me and laughs 
as I write. 

We go on and strike a cross street filled with dry goods. 
Farther along there are streets of rugs and one that fairly 
reeks with attar of roses and other perfumes. There are 
streets of shops selling nothing but jewellery, gold tiaras 
set with diamonds, gorgeous belt buckles encrusted with 
sapphires and emeralds, and brooches of pigeon-blood 
rubies. One would think the wealth of the world had been 
shovelled into baskets and brought here for sale. In this 
273 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

jewellery street and others of the main tunnels several of 
the merchants have plate-glass windows and up-to-date 
counters; Western methods seem to be coming in gradually. 
Some of the finest stores are not visible from the street. 
One may crawl through a hole in the wall, climb up narrow 
stairs, and find a room filled with the treasures of Aladdin. 
Here are jewels that have been worn by the beauties of the 
harems, gold and silver articles from Russia, and rugs that 
are worth as much as the gems. There are antiques also. 
A diplomat friend of mine who was with me in one of these 
stores to-day brought a little sarcophagus of alabaster, 
which I venture is two thousand years old. It is about 
twice the size of a cigar box and was once used to hold 
the ashes of some beloved dead. Experienced shoppers 
learn to avoid the Greeks, the Armenians, and the Jews, 
who send out men to entice people to the shops where they 
sell so-called antiques. 

Everywhere merchants and customers are discussing 
prices. The word “bazaar’' means to bargain and this mar¬ 
ket deserves its name. There are no fixed prices for any¬ 
thing, so that each purchase involves a contest. 

After the sunset chant of the muezzin, calling the Faith¬ 
ful to prayer, the bazaars of Stamboul are deserted save 
for the watchmen guarding the wares hidden behind iron 
doors. On Friday, the Moslem Sabbath, all the Turkish 
stalls will be closed; the Jews will do no business on 
Saturday, and the Christian Greeks and Armenians will 
shut up shop on Sunday. 

As we leave the bazaar, we notice the public letter- 
writers in the shade near a mosque. Here is a well-dressed 
Turk of middle age dictating a business letter to a spec¬ 
tacled old scribe. Education is nominally compulsory in 
274 



Moslems find beads useful in counting off the thirty-six prayers and 
sixteen quotations from the Koran required by the ordinary ritual. Be¬ 
tween his shrewd bargains with customers, the Turkish merchant often 
reads his Koran. 















Since only one in twenty-four of Turkey’s population attends school, 
illiteracy is considered no disgrace and even the well-to-do patronize the 
public letter-writer without embarrassment. 





HERE AND THERE IN STAMBOUL 

Turkey, but since only one in twenty-four of the popula¬ 
tion attends school, illiteracy is so usual that it is con¬ 
sidered no disgrace even for the well-to-do. At the shallow 
basins in the mosque courtyard worshippers are washing 
their hands, arms, nostrils, and ears according to the in¬ 
structions of the Koran, before going in to prayer. To the 
Moslem cleanliness is not merely next to godliness, but 
it is a part of godliness. There are more than one hun¬ 
dred Turkish baths in Constantinople. Every important 
mosque has its bath and some mosque baths have been 
endowed so that the poor may enjoy this luxury. 

Passing on, we pause for a moment at a Turkish res¬ 
taurant where the food is laid on tables set along the 
street. Like all the old-fashioned Turks, the customers 
are eating with their fingers. For this reason napkins are 
an important item among their people. Finely embroi¬ 
dered towels and napkins are often used, many of which 
are bought by the globe-trotters and sent back home as 
decorations. The ends are sometimes worked in fine 
patterns of gold and silver thread and some of the pieces 
sell for five and ten dollars each. As we watch the res¬ 
taurant keeper serving meat or fish with his hands, plung¬ 
ing them into one pot after another without even wiping 
them in between, we decide not to patronize his place. 

But farther on we do take a drink of coffee while we 
sit watching the street-life of Stamboul. Turkish coffee 
is as thick as maple syrup and has a rich dark brown 
colour. It is served without cream in tiny cups set in 
holders of gold, silver, or brass filigree work. I often 
see the cooks at the out-of-door eating places preparing 
it. The roasted coffee is pounded in a mortar and several 
spoonfuls of the powder mixed with boiling water. The 
275 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

mixture is then held over the fire in a long-handled pot, be¬ 
ing shaken from time to time as a thick scum rises to the 
surface. Before it boils, more water is added, after which 
it is allowed to boil and is then ready for serving. Sugar 
is added and sometimes a little musk. 

Coffee cigarettes, and preserves, sometimes of rose 
leaves, are given callers at Turkish homes, and it is not 
uncommon in the bazaars for a merchant to have coffee 
brought in before he proceeds with a sale. The Turks are 
fond of sweets, and often serve them after each one of 
eight or nine dishes. Sherbets are popular, and the ice¬ 
cream vendor does a big business in the streets of Stam- 
boul. Great quantities of the fig paste of Smyrna are 
sold here, too, while some of the most delicious candies I 
have ever tasted 1 have bought at the Stamboul end of the 
Galata Bridge. I am not surprised that the mixture of 
fig paste and nougat is called Turkish Delight. 

In his home the old-fashioned Turk does not use a dining 
table but eats from a tray of about the diameter of a wash- 
tub. In the centre of the tray is the hot dish of the meal sur¬ 
rounded by the salt-cellars, the pepper dishes, the pickles, 
and the other condiments and appetizers the Turks like 
so much. At a meal in the villages each person has his 
own spoon with which he helps himself to the thick soup. 
Pilaf is to the Turk what macaroni is to the Italian, or 
rice to the Japanese. It is made of rice cooked with butter 
and is by no means an unsavory dish. It is served at all 
the hotels here, being as popular as curry and rice in India. 

Fire has always been one of the great scourges of Con¬ 
stantinople, where, it is estimated, it destroys every 
decade more than twenty-five thousand homes. On the 
Galata Tower, in Pera, and similar towers in the other 
276 


HERE AND THERE IN STAMBOUL 

sections watchmen keep a lookout day and night. As 
soon as they see signs of a fire, warnings are sent out and 
soon the volunteer firemen are on the way to put out the 
blaze. 

The volunteer firemen of Constantinople are unique. 
Their organizations are made up of venturesome and more 
or less disreputable young men of all races. Stripped al¬ 
most to the skin, bareheaded and barefooted, a hooting 
squad dashes through the streets on a dead run. In the 
lead is a man swinging a brass wand and behind him come 
the firemen, carrying a handpump mounted on a wooden 
box with two poles at each end resting on the men's 
shoulders. As they are not paid by the city, they drive a 
hard bargain with the man whose property is threatened 
and they have the reputation of helping themselves to 
what they want. The firemen are superstitious about the 
use of sea water, which they say makes a fire burn more 
fiercely than ever, and the city water supply is most in¬ 
adequate. I dare say, though, that by my next visit the 
volunteer firemen will be as much a thing of the past as 
are the dogs that were so prevalent in the streets when I 
was in Constantinople before. I am told that the Turks 
will shortly introduce modern fire-fighting apparatus and 
that the city government took over the apparatus installed 
by the Allies in Pera. This reminds me of an incident that 
occurred when Kaiser Wilhelm and Abdul-Hamid 11 were 
such cronies. In return for some big concessions from the 
Turkish Sultan, the Kaiser presented him with a modern 
fire engine for his city. The Turks admired its polished 
brass and shiny nickel so much that they put it in their 
museum and roped it off from the touch of sightseers. 

The Imperial Museum in Stamboul is an archaeological 
277 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

treasure house with enough broken statues to fill several 
rooms of the British Museum, and with sarcophagi that 
would be considered interesting even in Athens or Rome. 
It has the collections made by Doctor Schliemann from his 
excavations at Troy and also some of the finds of the 
archaeologists at Babylon and in Assyria and Mesopotamia. 
The most wonderful of the sarcophagi in the Museum is 
that of Alexander the Great. It was dug up at Sidon not 
far from Tyre and is supposed to have been made four 
hundred years before Christ. Some of you remember 
the jingle you recited as schoolboys: 

*‘How big was Alexander, Pa? 

The people call him great. 

Was he so big that he could stand 
On some tall steeple high. 

And while his feet were on the ground 
His hands could touch the sky?"’ 

"*Oh, no, my child, about as large 
As 1 or Uncle James. 

’Twas not his stature made him great. 

But the greatness of his name." 

Well, I am glad to be able to settle at last the height 
of the great Macedonian monarch. I have gone over his 
sarcophagus with a tape measure and can give you its di¬ 
mensions inside and out. It is a huge block of Pentelic 
marble six feet in height. The interior would allow Alex¬ 
ander to be full nine feet tall, or nine inches shorter than 
Goliath of Gath. 

Another of the sarcophagi is that of Tabnith, king of 
Sidon, who reigned in Palestine about 700 B. C. in the days 
of the Phoenicians. The inscription reminds one of the 
278 


HERE AND THERE IN STAMBOUL 


epitaph on Shakespeare's grave in the church at Stratford 
on Avon: 

Blest be the man that spares these stones 
And curst be he that moves my bones. 

Tabnith's inscription reads: 

I, Tabnith, King of Sidonians, lie at rest in this tomb. Whoever 
thou art who discover it, do not, I adjure thee, open my coffin and 
do not disturb me for there is neither silver nor gold nor treasure beside 
me. I rest alone in this tomb. Such an act is an abomination in the 
eyes of Ashtoreth. And if thou openest my coffin, and disturbest me, 
mayest thou have no posterity with the living under the sun and no 
resting place among the dead. 

King Tabnith was a liar, for when the tomb was opened, 
his embalmed mummy was found surrounded by jewels 
and precious stones, which are now shown here in glass 
cases. The mummy is in a good state of preservation. 


279 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


FANATICS OF ISLAM 

F rom what has been published about the changes 
wrought by the Turkish Republic, one might 
think that the old Mohammedanism had 
passed away, and that from now on the lions 
of the Prophet and the lambs of the Christians would lie 
down together. The truth is that the democratic and 
progressive spirit is confined largely to the educated 
Turks, to the officials, and to the army controlled by 
them. 

Though there has been an apparent separation of Church 
and state, under the surface Islam will probably continue 
to rule, for the earnest follower of the Prophet is as fa¬ 
natical to-day as he was when Mohammed II conquered 
Constantinople in 1453 and made it the capital of the 
Ottoman Empire. Instances of such fanaticism are to be 
seen everywhere throughout the interior of Turkey, and 
the fervour of the believers is evident in their religious 
celebrations here in Constantinople. 

The Mohammedans are divided into almost as many 
different sects as the Christians. Among these are the 
dervishes, of whom a recent survey of Constantinople un¬ 
der American auspices reports that there are one hundred 
and seventy-seven different orders and sub-orders. The 
dervishes are to be found everywhere in Turkey and their 
religion is said to be their whole life. They have some two 
280 


FANATICS OF ISLAM 


hundred and fifty public meeting-places in Constantinople 
and each order has its peculiar ceremonies and customs. 
All claim to represent the mystic side of Mohammedanism 
and through denial of the earthly claims of the body seek 
to bring the soul closer to God. 

The Whirling Dervishes have a mosque in the European 
section of Constantinople near the Grand Rue de Pera, 
where you may see the devotees go through their gyrations 
once a week the year round. In another quarter is a 
house devoted to the Howling Dervishes, where the be¬ 
lievers are even more fanatical. This is on the side of a 
hill just below the Y. M. C. A. and not far from the Pera 
Palace Hotel. 

The Whirling Dervishes wear mantles like that of 
Mohammed and high, gray, sugar-loaf caps, which, they 
say, resemble the form of the vase in which Mohammed’s 
soul was kept before the present world was created. They 
claim that their order originated with a sultan who lived 
more than two hundred years before the day of Columbus. 
This man was like Buddha in that he left the throne and 
renounced the world. He was a writer and many of his 
verses have become proverbs. The sect is now governed 
by his lineal descendants and every member has to serve 
for one thousand and one days as a subordinate before 
he can be admitted to full privileges. 

The Mevlevi, as these dervishes are called, have exer¬ 
cises every Tuesday and Friday, when they whirl wildly 
around on their toes and dance about to the sound of a 
tambourine, chanting of the goodness of the ‘‘One God” 
and the vanity of earthly existence. As they spin around 
they hold out their arms, the right above the head and the 
left below, and keep both hands open. Their eyes are 
281 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

dosed and their heads are bent sideways on the shoulders. 
By doing this, they daim, they are able to send their souls 
into the world of dreams so that for the time their spirits 
leave their bodies and become one with the Creator. The 
particular phrases for the invocation of God, which are 
supposed to prepare them for the separation of soul and 
body, must be repeated hundreds of times a day. 

1 have just spent two hours with the Howling Dervishes. 
This order has its meetings every Thursday afternoon and 
visitors are admitted. The ceremonies are wildly fanat¬ 
ical. The men work themselves into an ecstasy during 
which they eat fire, run knives through their flesh, batter 
their heads against the wall, and fall down on the floor, 
foaming at the mouth in their religious frenzy. One can 
scarcely believe that such horrible observances could 
survive in this modern age, but their existence was proved 
to me this afternoon in the scenes 1 shall describe. 

The mosque where the Howlers assembled was not large 
and the room where the services took place was only about 
thirty feet square. The floor was covered with sheep¬ 
skins with the wool on, and at the back, in a little alcove 
not bigger around than a wagon-wheel, was a Turkish 
rug, upon which sat the sheik, or high priest, wearing 
turban and gown. Sitting on their heels upon the sheep¬ 
skins were a motley group. One man was dressed in shirt, 
vest, and trousers, but the green turban of the pilgrim to 
Mecca covered his head. When, in the height of his 
ecstasy, he took off his turban, his long black hair hung 
from his semi-bald head down to the buckle on the back of 
his vest. 

I noticed some boys of ten or twelve in the crowd, little 
fellows dressed in black and wearing fezzes, and also a 
282 



In the hole-in-the-wal! shops of the bazaars of Stamboul one may buy 
anything from gorgeous Persian rugs to egg-beaters made in Birmingham. 
There are no fixed prices and the merchants love to show their skill in driv¬ 
ing close bargains. 







Fountains are plentiful in Constantinople, since before their prayers 
the Faithful must go through a ritual of washing five times a day. The 
Sultan Ahmed fountain is the most beautiful in the city. 




















FANATICS OF ISLAM 

frail-Iooking little girl of six who was to have a place in 
the exercises near the close of the ceremony. 

Before the service began a man brought in an iron bowl 
as big as a wash-basin filled with live charcoal, in which 
were heating two iron spoons with flat bowls and handles 
almost a foot long. Behind the sheikh in the alcove were 
knives of various kinds, swords, and long, sharp steel 
skewers with wooden knobs on one end. I saw the reason 
for these later on. 

The first business was to excite the worshippers. The 
old sheik began making little sermons, after each of which 
the believers threw themselves back and forth, whirling 
their heads around as though on pivots and shouting in 
unison verses that I suppose came from the Koran. One 
of these sounded like ''La ilah ilia dlah,” divided into 
six syllables. As they uttered the first the dervishes bent 
forward, at the second they raised themselves, and at the 
third they bent backwards, then swayed back and forth, 
crying and howling. They sang together, chanting faster 
and faster to keep time with the music. After awhile the 
syllables got jumbled together until one heard nothing 
but wild cries of "IL' and "Lah.” 

As they went on their faces grew red, some of them 
foamed at the mouth, and some began to jerk spasmodic¬ 
ally. Then they rose to their feet and whirled around, 
jumping up and down and stamping like madmen. 

Meantime the coals in the brazier had died down, but 
the old sheik fanned them into a glow and a little later 
took out the red-hot iron paddles. These were grabbed 
by two of the worshippers, who trotted around the room 
gingerly licking them while the rest shrieked in ecstasy. 
As the irons cooled, the fanatics kept them in their mouths 
283 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

longer and longer, and finally handed them back to the 
sheik. I could see no steam rising and did not hear the 
flesh sizzle, yet their tongues must have been burned by 
the red-hot irons. 

While this was going on, other devotees took the steel 
skewers 1 have described and allowed the sheik to run 
them through their cheeks. How this was done without 
causing the blood to flow I do not know, but I am sure 
the skewers went through the flesh, for I could see the 
wooden knob on one side of a man's jaw and the steel 
point on the other. One man took a stone and, pressing 
the point of the skewer that had passed through his cheek 
against a wooden post of the building, pounded on the 
knob, nailing himself, as it were, to the post. After a while 
the sheik came and pulled out the skewer. He put some 
of his spittle on the wound and that, I suppose, made it 
well. Half-a-dozen different dervishes performed this 
operation of nailing themselves to the post. Three of 
them were within ten feet of me and I do not see how 
there could have been any deceit in the business. 

By this time the howling had risen to a pandemonium 
and bedlam seemed to have broken loose. The green- 
turbaned Mecca pilgrim was one of the most violent. He 
rolled his head around as if it were on ball-bearings, 
makingsomething like one hundred revolutions perminute. 
Then all at once he made a dive for a wooden pillar on the 
opposite side of the hall, butting it with his head. The 
noise of the impact was like the crack of a pistol. He did 
this three times before he sank exhausted to the floor. 

A little later the sheik began to cure the sick. The 
little girl I have described was laid face down on the floor. 
The old man stood on her back and, placing his hands on 
284 


FANATICS OF ISLAM 


the shoulders of two men on each side, jumped up and 
down. The little one did not cry out. He next trod on 
a sick boy in the same way, and then, it seemed to me, took 
special delight in performing a dance on the body of a sick 
man. The whole affair was horrible in the extreme. 
The crying and foaming of these howlers will recur to my 
mind whenever I think of the depths of religious emotion¬ 
alism and how, the world over, it can rob man of his 
reason. 

So much for the darker side of Mohammedanism. Now 
let me show you some of its brighter aspects as 1 have 
seen them in this stronghold of the Moslem world. You 
all know how, centuries ago, the Mohammedans were 
among the most famous scholars of mankind. They were 
skilled in the sciences, especially in mathematics and 
astronomy, and the universities of Bagdad, Cairo, and 
Fez were noted all over Europe. To-day Constantinople 
is full of books written in languages now largely forgotten. 
The Mosque of Santa Sophia has a big collection of more 
than five thousand manuscripts, which are being cata¬ 
logued and repaired. Among them I saw an illuminated 
Koran the size of a sheet of note paper and as thick as my 
finger. Every page was a picture in itself and it must have 
taken a lifetime to make all those sheets of hand-drawn and 
coloured characters. The sheik in charge told me that 
the book was more than a thousand years old and that it 
was worth fifteen thousand dollars. Another volume in 
ancient Persian script, much larger, is said to be the third 
book ever written about the stars. The author was an 
Egyptian who lived three thousand years ago. Some of 
the books in the library have gold covers and some are so 
precious that they are kept under lock and key and are 
285 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

not shown to strangers. Many came from the loot of 
victorious Moslem armies of the past and some have been 
sent here from the centres of Mohammedanism in other 
parts of the world. 

Santa Sophia has been for nearly five centuries in the 
hands of the Moslems, but it was built by Christians. On 
Christmas Eve, in the year 537, the Emperor Justinian 
dedicated the great edifice to Santa Sophia, which means, 
in Greek, the Wisdom, or Word of God, and thus stands for 
Christ himself. Standing beside a mosaic representing 
Solomon looking around in wonder and admiration, the 
Emperor shouted aloud: 

''Glory to God, who has deemed me worthy to accom¬ 
plish such an undertaking! Solomon, 1 have surpassed 
thee.” 

This he had undoubtedly done, for Santa Sophia is ten 
times the size of Solomon’s Temple and far more splendid. 
Later it became known as, next to Saint Peter’s, the largest 
church in the world, a "terrestrial paradise,” "the car of 
the Cherubim,” "the throne of the glory of God,” and 
"the marvel of the earth.” 

It has been estimated by a noted Greek scholar that the 
cost, including expenditures for ground, materials, labour, 
ornaments, and church utensils, was sixty-four millions 
of dollars, or more than has been spent for any other 
Christian sanctuary ever erected to the glory of God. 
The usual estimate of the cost of St. Peter’s at Rome 
is somewhat under forty-eight million dollars. No other 
Christian church has approached Santa Sophia in the 
beauty and variety of its marbles or in the lavish use of 
silver, gold, and precious stones for decorations and for 
the sacred vessels. 


286 


FANATICS OF ISLAM 

The exterior has been changed for the worse since its 
erection. The huge dome is now dwarfed by the buttresses 
built to stay it against earthquake shocks and the effects 
of time. Moreover, the Turks have daubed the building 
with a coating of plaster, striped with broad bands of a 
deeper hue, and heavy minarets have been added to the 
corners of the structure. 

The first time I entered Santa Sophia was during an 
evening service in the month of Ramadan. Imagine that 
immense room with its great dome supported on hundreds 
of marble columns, its carved pulpit, its thousands of 
lights, its two great fountains, and its gigantic Turkish 
emblems, and you will have some idea of my sensations as 
I entered. Great stars of flame seemed to me to be float¬ 
ing in the air between the lofty ceiling and the marble 
pavement. Every pillar and every alcove appeared to be 
ablaze. The precious marbles of the walls and the gilded 
friezes of the arches and cornices threw back a thousand 
reflections. The colours of the prayer rugs and the cos¬ 
tumes of the worshippers added to the brilliant effect. 

It was nine o’clock when, through the liberal use of 
baksheesh, I slipped into the gallery and looked down on 
the devout Moslems kneeling on the floor below me. At 
least five thousand were bowed there with their faces 
toward Mecca. From the back of the mosque came the 
shrill voice of the imam leading the service. His wonder¬ 
ful tenor penetrated the remotest part of the vast chamber, 
and in response to its chanting the bodies of the five thou¬ 
sand turbaned and gowned men rose and fell as one. When 
they sank down, the striking of their ten thousand knees 
on the floor made a noise like the rumbling of a cannon 
in the distance; and when they touched their foreheads 
287 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

on the floor, there was the sound of the falling of some 
great weight. At the end of the exercises each worshipper 
took up the shoes he had removed on entering the mosque 
and, carrying them in his hand, walked silently from the 
place. 

In altering Santa Sophia to make it suit the require¬ 
ments of a Mohammedan mosque, some of the priceless 
mosaics were covered over with plaster and whitewash 
and beautiful Christian emblems were removed or defaced. 
The innumerable gold and silver ornaments have disap¬ 
peared. The prayer rugs scattered over the marble pave¬ 
ment and the pulpit from which a priest of Islam reads 
the Koran every Friday do not belong here. Santa 
Sophia still looks more like a Christian church than 
a Mohammedan mosque, and as someone has said, ''re¬ 
sembles a mighty captive ever mutely protesting against 
his chains.'’ 

The Greek Christians declare that some day the chains 
will be broken and that the church will fall once more 
into Christian hands. There is a tradition that on the 
day that the conqueror, Mohammed 11 , rode into the 
sanctuary to take it over in the name of the Prophet, a 
priest was sayjng mass at the altar. The Turkish soldiers 
drove him from his place and would have killed him, but 
the wall opened and, bearing the consecrated elements in 
his hands, he disappeared. The marble slabs closed be¬ 
hind him, never to reopen until the Cross replaces the 
Crescent on the dome of Santa Sophia. 

In answer to this legend the Moslems point to a certain 
pillar in the mosque on which they say there is the print 
of the hand of Mohammed 11 . When the Turks entered 
the city twenty thousand Christians crowded around 
288 


FANATICS OF ISLAM 


and into the church of Divine Wisdom, strong in their 
belief in an ancient prophecy that a miracle would deliver 
them from their enemies. But the Turkish soldiers burst 
in the doors, threw down altars and tore down crucifixes, 
gathered up all the treasures they could reach and such 
of the women as took their fancy, and shackled the rest of 
the people together to be driven out and sold as slaves. 
Then entered Mohammed II on his great charger and 
rising in his stirrups, he struck this pillar with his blood¬ 
stained hand, and shouted: '‘There is no God but Allah, 
and Mohammed is his Prophet!'' Thus, say the true 
believers, he dedicated the Christian temple to the faith of 
Islam for all time. 


289 


CHAPTER XXXVII 


THE PASSING OF THE SULTANS 

HIS is my third visit to Constantinople during a 



momentous era in the great city’s history. My 


first was in 1889, when the notorious Sultan 


A Abdul-Hamid 11 was at the height of his power. 
He was ruling Turkey with an iron hand, giving secret 
orders for massacres, and putting out of the way any of his 
subjects who opposed him. At the same time, he was in 
constant fear of assassination, and sat up night after night 
trembling with terror, until at length he was pushed off 
the throne by the Young Turks in 1909. 

The movement that dethroned Abdul-Hamid 11 may be 
said to have had its birth in the wild extravagances of 
his predecessor, Abdul-Aziz, the father of the last of the 
sultans. Emerson says somewhere that a bad king is a 
blessing to a people if only he is bad enough to drive 
them to reforms. Abdul-Aziz was that bad. He was one 
of the greatest spendthrifts that ever sat upon the Turkish 
throne. His reign was a long series of enormous expendi¬ 
tures of money borrowed from England and France. He 
built palace after palace, for it had been prophesied that he 
would live as long as he kept up his building. He im¬ 
ported lions and tigers from Africa, filled his palaces 
with parrots, and had pianos strapped on men’s backs and 
played there. 

He liked women so well that his harem is said to have 


290 



The Emperor Justinian robbed the pagan temples of the East to 
make Santa Sophia the richest Christian sanctuary ever erected, but for 
nearly five centuries it has been a Mohammedan mosque. 
















Under the old plane tree near Santa Sophia the Janizaries, the imperial 
bodyguard established in the 14th century, hatched many a conspiracy 
and often its giant arms were strung with the dangling corpses of their 
victims. 







THE PASSING OF THE SULTANS 


had as many as that of King Solomon, who, as I remem- 
Toer it, had thirteen hundred wives and seven hundred con¬ 
cubines. He fell in love with the Empress Eugenie among 
others and when she stopped a few days at Constantinople 
on her way to the opening of the Suez Canal he put up a 
palace especially for her entertainment. At one time 
Abdul-Aziz made a tour of the European countries and re¬ 
turned much impressed by the homeliness of the royal 
ladies he had seen. He declared that, with the exception 
of Eugenie and Empress Elizabeth of Austria, all of them 
were hideous. A king’s wife, he said, should be the most 
beautiful woman in his country, but the European mon- 
archs appeared to have selected the plainest. He vowed 
he would try to find a woman as beautiful as Eugenie and 
he thought he had done so when he took into his harem 
a Circassian slave girl named Mihri, who remained his 
favourite wife until the day of his death. 

According to the old custom, every sultan was given 
a beautiful slave girl at the close of Ramadan, or the 
Mohammedan Lent. He received her on Easter day, or 
Bairam. The girl was selected by the Valida Sultana, the 
mother of the sultan, from a large number, fifteen of whom 
were picked out and taken into the palace. Here they 
were fed, groomed, and put through their paces. Shortly 
before Bairam, the lucky girl was chosen and became 
the bride of the sultan for that year, although he had 
a right to take also such other girls as struck his fancy. 
He did not see his Bairam bride until the night after the 
feast and then only when he had retired to rest. If she 
happened to please him, she was given separate apart¬ 
ments and her children were accorded royal rank. On 
the other hand, if the sultan did not like her, she was 
291 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

put with the other slave girls and might never see him 
again. 

During my first visit 1 got a peep at the jewels of the 
sultans which then, of course, stood in Abdul-Hamid's 
name, but to which Abdul-Aziz had made many additions. 
Guarded by a squad of Turkish soldiers and accompanied 
by officers whose swords clanked over the marble floors of 
the Old Seraglio, I was permitted to feast my eyes on a 
collection of gems marvellous beyond all the dreams of 
Aladdin. 1 was astounded by the great collection of quilts 
embroidered in pearls. Take the largest bed quilt you 
have ever seen and cover it with embroidery of pearls of 
all sizes, from the smallest seed pearl to some as big as a 
bird’s egg. Imagine tens of thousands of these jewels 
put on in the most elaborate patterns so that only here 
and there you get a glimpse of the satin ground of the quilt, 
and you have before your mind’s eye one of the coverlets 
under which Turkish royalty has rested. 

In a case was a cradle encrusted with precious stones, 
in which I doubt not a hundred or so of the children 
of the sultans had slept. I counted a dozen or more gold 
hand mirrors set with diamonds, emeralds, and rubies that 
must have reflected the charms of many a harem beauty. 
The most amazing feature of the collection was a throne as 
big as your grandfather’s armchair, made of solid gold and 
studded with precious stones. This chair of state was 
made for a shah of Persia, who was conquered by a Turkish 
sultan of the sixteenth century. It had a cushion of satin 
embroidered with pearls. There was a magnificent toilet- 
table with a top of lapis-lazuli richly inlaid with gems and a 
mirror supported by small diamond-encrusted pillars. The 
claw feet appeared to be made entirely of diamonds, emer- 
292 


THE PASSING OF THE SULTANS 


aids, rubies, and carbuncles, and about the edge of the 
table was a deep diamond fringe. 

On one sword hilt I counted fifteen diamonds, each as 
big as the end of a man's thumb, and there were dozens of 
other swords decorated with jewelled hilts of solid silver. 
The costumes on the waxen images of the various sultans of 
the past blazed with gems, and a manikin carved from a 
single pearl had an opal for a face and a ruby for a turban. 
There were gold dishes and plates, agate cups, great pieces 
of coral and amber, and big bowls of uncut stones. At last 
I seemed to reach the saturation point and was unable to 
take in any more of the splendour spread out before my 
eyes. 

Yet, while all these treasures were locked up in one 
of the royal palaces, Turkey had a foreign debt of more 
than one billion dollars and the country faced bank¬ 
ruptcy. 

But to go back to the story of Abdul-Aziz. He spent 
so much money on his wives and palaces that finally the 
people dethroned him and confined him in the palace he 
had built for Eugenie, where he died five days later. 
According to one story he committed suicide in a room 
adjoining the harem. He had sent away his ladies, ask¬ 
ing Mihri for a hand-glass and a pair of Persian scissors, 
so that he might trim his whiskers. She brought them and 
he locked the door. It was opened by Ismail Bey, who 
said that he found the Sultan dying from wounds in the 
veins and arteries of his arms, wrists, and feet. Another 
story is that the Sultan was assassinated by his political 
enemies. 

Murad V, who succeeded to the sultanate, became terri¬ 
fied, and after three months went insane. He was kept in 
293 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

seclusion until the day of his death and Abdul-Hamid 11 
took his place. 

Abdul-Hamid came to the throne at twenty-four and 
ruled for thirty-five years. His whole reign was full of 
conspiracy and treachery and frantic attempts to save his 
skin and his crown. Although he found the Turkish Em¬ 
pire bankrupt, he added to its debt. He promised to 
grant a constitution and then went back on his word. 
During the latter part of his reign, the sentiment against 
him grew stronger and stronger. The Young Turks 
formed secret societies in all parts of the Empire. From 
their headquarters in Paris they sent out propaganda, 
smuggling into Turkey tons of literature published in 
Arabic. Finally they raised a revolutionary army to 
support their demand that Abdul-Hamid give them a 
constitution at once. The Sultan was then ready to ac¬ 
cede to their demands, but before he could do so, the Young 
Turks had marched upon Constantinople and seized the 
city. 

It was just at this time, when Abdul-Hamid was being 
torn from his throne, that I made my second visit to 
Turkey. I saw the fighting, watched the Sultan taken 
from the palace, and photographed the long procession 
of cabs, hundreds in number, which carried the ladies of 
his harem and their guard of eunuchs across Constan¬ 
tinople. 

On the afternoon before the revolution, as I rode out 
to the Sweet Waters of Europe, I had noticed soldiers at 
all the crossroads and had been turned back when I tried 
to enter certain roads. I heard afterwards that the Young 
Turks had about forty thousand troops with which they 
had surrounded Constantinople. They had bribed some 
294 


THE PASSING OF THE SULTANS 


of the common soldiers of the Sultan’s army, many of 
whom had been conscripted from Bulgaria, to kill their 
olficers, three hundred of whom, I was informed, were 
murdered that night. At the same time the revolutionists 
stationed their men in various parts of the city to keep 
order so that the whole thing was accomplished in the 
quietest possible manner. The only shooting occurred in 
the early morning. I was staying at the Pera Palace Hotel 
and was awakened at about four o’clock by the sound of 
the rapid-fire guns popping away not half a mile distant. 
One ball went through the transom above the front door 
of the hotel but no damage was done. It was all over be¬ 
fore the sun rose, and when 1 went out on the streets, this 
city of more than a million showed as little disorder as a 
New England village on Sunday. Constantinople was 
under martial law, but the soldiers were most polite and 
one could walk about without fear of being molested. 
That afternoon 1 drove past the Yildiz Palace, where the 
Sultan was then imprisoned. 

Abdul-Hamid attributed the loss of his throne to the 
education that had been spread through Turkey by the 
American schools. In talking of this, sometime before his 
deposition, he said: "Ht was Robert College that lost me 
Bulgaria, and it will, I believe, eventually cost me my 
throne.” 

The Young Turks chose Mohammed V to succeed 
Abdul-Hamid. They adopted some reforms, though until 
the World War much the same conditions prevailed as 
before the revolution. In 1918 a new sultan was chosen 
under the title of Mohammed VI, but on November i, 
1922, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey voted to 
abolish his office and title, and claimed for itself the 
295 


THE ALPS, THE DANUBE, AND NEAR EAST 

supreme authority. Three days later the administration 
was taken over by the Assembly, and the Constantinople 
Cabinet of the Sultan resigned. Mohammed VI, fearing 
that his fate might be the same as that of Abdul-Hamid, 
took refuge on a British warship and left Constanti¬ 
nople. The Assembly then elected as caliph, or spiritual 
head of the Moslem world, Abdul-Medjid, the only cousin 
of Mohammed VI and thirty-eighth in the line of succession 
from Othman, who founded the Turkish Empire in 1299. 
He was a nephew of Abdul Hamid who, in his insane 
fear of dethronement and assassination, had kept him in a 
kind of gilded captivity for many years. 

But even the spiritual leadership of his people and his 
titles of Commander of the Faithful, Vice-Regent of the 
Prophet, Shadow of God on Earth, were soon taken from 
poor Abdul-Medjid. In less than two years after his ap¬ 
pointment he was notified in the palace of Dolma-Baghcheh 
that the National Assembly at Angora had abolished the 
Caliphate and voted his immediate expulsion from Turkey.' 
And so, a broken old man, he went with his family to 
Paris to live a retired life devoted mostly to painting and 
music. 

As President of the Grand National Assembly and Com- 
mander-in-Chief of the Army, Marshal Mustafa Kemal 
Pasha is the present ruler of Turkey. His government 
succeeded in getting the foreign troops out of Constan¬ 
tinople and has made the Turks masters in their own 
country. It has imposed new taxes, and makes the 
foreigners as well as the natives pay them. It has nego¬ 
tiated with other nations and has got them to agree that 
in Turkey foreigners shall be subject to the same laws as 
the Turks and must be tried in the same courts. This was 
296 


THE PASSING OF THE SULTANS 


not so in the past. There used to be one law for the for¬ 
eigner and another for the Turk and the great Powers dic¬ 
tated matters of foreign and domestic policy. Now the 
Turkish government has taken upon itself the same rights 
and duties as those assumed by other governments of the 
world. Whether the people are really ready for all the 
great changes made or whether they will go back to 
former conditions remains to be seen. 


THE END 


297 


SEE THE WORLD 


WITH 

Frank G. Carpenter 

Doubleday, Page & Company, in response to the de¬ 
mand from Carpenter readers, are now publishing the 
complete story of Carpenter’s World Travels, of which 
this book is the eleventh in the series. Those now avail¬ 
able are: 

1. ''The Holy Land and Syria” 

2. "From Tangier to Tripoli” 

Morocco, Algeria 
Tunisia and Tripoli 

"Alaskay our Northern Wonderland” 

4. "The Tail of the Hemisphere” 

Chile and Argentina 

5. "From Cairo to Kisumu” 

Egypt, The Sudan 
and Kenya Colony 

6. "Java and the East Indies” 

Java, Sumatra, 

The Moluccas, New Guinea, 

Borneo, and the Malay Peninsula 
298 


SEE THE WORLD 


7. ''France to Scandinavia” 

France, Belgium 
Holland, Denmark 
Norway, Sweden 

8 . "Mexico” 

g. "Australia, New Zealand, and Some Islands of the 
South Seas” 

Australia, New Zealand, 

New Guinea, the Samoas, 
the Fijis, and the Tongas 

70 . "Canada” 

and Newfoundland 

II, " The Alps, The Danube, and the Near East” 
Switzerland, Italy, 

Czechoslovakia, Austria, 

Hungary, Yugoslavia, 

Greece, Bulgaria, 

Rumania, Turkey 

Millions of Americans have already found Carpenter 
their ideal fellow traveller, and have enjoyed visiting with 
him all the corners of the earth. He tells his readers what 
they want to know, shows them what they want to see, 
and makes them feel that they are there. 

Carpenter’s World Travels is the only work of its 
kind. These books are familiar talks about the countries 
and peoples of the globe, with the author on the spot and 
the reader in his home. No other one man has visited so 
much of the earth and written on the ground, in plain and 
299 


SEE THE WORLD 


simple language, the story of what he has found. Car¬ 
penter’s World Travels are not the casual record of 
incidents of the journey, but the painstaking study of a 
trained observer, devoting his life to the task of interna¬ 
tional reporting. Each book is complete in itself; together 
they form the most vivid, interesting, and understandable 
picture of our modern world ever published. They are 
the fruit of more than thirty years of unparalleled success 
in writing for the American people, and the capstone of 
distinguished services to the teaching of geography in our 
public schools, which have used some four million copies 
of the Carpenter Geographical Readers. 


300 












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INDEX 


Abdul-Aziz, wild extravagances of, 
290; his death, 293. 

Abdul-Hamid, attributed his fall to 
education spread by American 
schools, 295. 

Abdul-Hamid 11 , dethroned, 290; vi¬ 
cissitudes of his reign, 294. 

Abdul-Medjid, Caliph, exiled from 
Turkey, 259, 296. 

Acropolis, the, at Athens, 175. 

Agricultural schools and colleges in 
Jugoslavia, 170. 

Agriculture, extent of in Switzerland, 
25; on Lombardy Plain, 47; Italian 
agricultural “revolution,” 50; In¬ 
ternational Institute of Agriculture 
founded at Rome, 50; in Bohemia, 
82, 91; well-kept and prosperous 
farms of Moravia, 104; Austria not 
self-sustaining, 121; the bread lands 
of the Danube, 143; in Jugoslavia, 
162, 168, 172; of Greece, 191, 192. 

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, at Sofia, 
210. 

Alabama Claims, settlement of at 
Geneva, 4. 

Aletsch Glacier, Switzerland, 30. 

Alfalfa, in Hungary, 143. 

Alexander the Great, his sarcophagus 
in the Imperial Museum at Constan¬ 
tinople, 278. 

Alexandros, of Greece, his brief reign, 
184, 185. 

Altar to the Unknown God, Rome, 57. 

American College for Women, near 
Constantinople, 260, 269. 

American colony, at Ploesti, Rumania, 
245. 

American School of Archaeology, es¬ 
tablishes school of classical studies 
at Athens, 205. 

American School of Classical Studies, 
excavations of at Corinth, 203; 
founding of the School in Athens, 
and its work, 205, 206. 


Appenzell, canton of, an old lace-mak¬ 
ing centre, 25. 

Arch of Septimus Severus, Rome, 67. 

Archaeology, excavations in Greece, 
200 et seq. 

Architecture: type of village houses in 
Bohemia, 89; of Budapest, 136; of 
Belgrade, 156; of Sofia, 213; of 
Rumania, 232. 

Athene, shrine to, at Athens, 177. 

Athens, modern and ancient, 174 et 
seq.; National Museum at, some of 
the treasures of ancient Greece ex¬ 
hibited, 207. 

Athletic training, a national institu¬ 
tion in Czechoslovakia, 96. 

Austria, as a republic, iij et seq.; her 
rehabilitation, 117; present size and 
population, 120; mineral and timber 
resources, 120; manufacturing and 
other industries, 122; “in the foot¬ 
steps of the Hapsburgs,” 124 et seq.; 
some disadvantages of the partition 
of the country, i^i et seq. 

Automobiles, reckless driving in Con¬ 
stantinople, 264. 

Balaton, Lake, the great resort of the 
Hungarians. 144; Emperor Charles 
interned at, 145. 

Banke, Bulgaria, mineral springs at, 
210. 

Barley, in Hungary, 143, 147; in Jugo¬ 
slavia, 170; in Rumania, 234. 

Basel, ribbon industry of, 24. 

Baths, mineral, at Sofia, 209. 

Batthyanyi, Count, beautiful estate 
of, m Hungary, 146. 

Bazaars, of Stamboul, 272. 

Bee-keeping, in Austria, 122; in 
Greece, 196. 

Belgrade, rejuvenation of the city, 152; 
population, of various races, 157. 

Belgrade University, great increase in 
number of students, 171. 


303 


INDEX 


Benes, Dr. Edward, first Premier of 
Czechoslovakia, a self-made man, 

lOO. 

Berne, capital city of Switzerland, i6. 

Beza, statue of, at Geneva, 4. 

Black Stone, the, Rome, 67. 

Bohemia, one of the three provinces 
composing Czechoslovakia, 79; a bee¬ 
hive of workshops, 82; well-kept-up 
farms of, 82; motoring through the 
country, 88. 

Boris 111 , czar of Bulgaria, his per¬ 
sonality, 218; interview with, 219. 

Bosporus, most famous small body of 
water in all history, 258. 

Bratislava, formerly Pressburg, capi¬ 
tal of Slovakia, 81, 104, 105, 106. 

Bread lands of the Danube, 143. 

Brienz, Lake, in the country of the 
wood carvers, 25. 

Brno, formerly Briinn, industrial cap¬ 
ital of Moravia, 81, 104, 105. 

Briinn, now Brno, manufacturing city 
and capital of Moravia, 81, 104, 105. 

Bucharest, city of hovels and palaces, 
231. 

Budapest, public improvements 
planned for, 131; the city where 
East and West meet, 135; the city’s 
rapid growth since the War, 141; 
social life of the city, 139; the Hun¬ 
garian cooking, 140; the “Flour 
City” of Europe, 149. 

Bulgaria, a land of mineral springs, 
210; Sofia, the capital city, 210; 
interview with Boris 111 , 217; edu¬ 
cation of the people, 220; its Na¬ 
tional labour army, 225. 

Caesars, Castle of the, Rome, 58. 

Calvin, John, statue of, at Geneva, 4. 

Camels, in Constantinople, 263. 

Capitoline, the, Rome, 58. 

Carlsbad, now Karlovy Vary, 105. 

Carnegie Corporation, aids American 
School of Classical Studies at 
Athens, 206. 

Carp, raised for market in Hungary, 
148. 

Castle of the Caesars, Rome, 58. 

Castor and Pollux, temple to, Rome, 
69. 

Cecil, Lord Robert, on international 
relations, 12. 

Cellulose, production of Austria, 121. 


Charles, Emperor of Austria, died in 
exile, 129; failing in attempts to 
regain throne is exiled to Funchal, 

* 45 - . . , 

Cheesemaking, an important industry 
in Switzerland, 26. 

Church of the Capuchins, Vienna, 128, 
129. 

Coal, scarcity of, in Switzerland, 26; 
in Italy, 51; production of Czecho¬ 
slovakia, 80. 

Coffee, history of adoption in Vienna, 
115; as served in Stamboul, 275. 

Coligny, Admiral, statue of, at 
Geneva, 4. 

Colosseum, the, at Rome, 57, 71. 

Communism, in Switzerland, 21. 

Condensed milk, production of, in 
Switzerland, 26. 

Constantino 1 , of Greece, his forced 
abdication, 183, 184. 

Constantinople, the city and its 
people, 258 et seq. 

Cooperative institutions of Bohemia, 
94 - 

Copper, mined in Czechoslovakia, 80. 

Corinth, Greece, the original source of 
the currant grape, 196; excavations 
at, 203. 

Corn, production in Italy, 50; produc¬ 
tion in Bohemia, 91; in Jugoslavia, 
170; in Greece, 194; in Rumania, 
234 - 

Coronation Church, Budapest, 137. 

Cromwell, Oliver, statue of, at Ge¬ 
neva, 4. 

Currants and raisins, huge production 
in Greece, 197. 

Czechoslovakia, principal rivers of, 81; 
its railway system, 81; busiest part 
of Europe, 78 et seq. 

Danube River, southern boundary of 
Czechoslovakia, 81; travelling on, 
to Vienna, 104, 106; one of the 
greatest waterways in Europe, no; 
immense system of dikes to control 
floods, 133. 

Delphi, the city of the Oracle, 200. 

Dervishes, Howling and Whirling, 281. 

Dining customs of the Turks, 276. 

Dolma-Baghcheh, Sultan’s palace at 
Kevak, 259. 

Dunant, Henri, founder of Inter¬ 
national Red Cross, 4. 


304 


INDEX 


Education, in Switzerland, 15; in 
Czechoslovakia, 99 et seq.; in Jugo¬ 
slavia, 171; in Bulgaria, 220; in 
Turkey, 274. 

Elbe-Danube Canal, in course of con¬ 
struction, 81. 

Electrical development of railways in 
Austria, 121. 

Elizabeth, murdered Empress of Aus¬ 
tria, no, 124, 126, 129. 

Embroideries, chief industry of St. 
Gall, 25. 

Eugenie, Empress, entertained at 
Constantinople, 291. 

Excavations, on the sites of ancient 
Greek cities, 200 ef seq. 

Fanatics of Islam, 280 et seq. 

Farel, statue of, at Geneva, 4. 

Farm homes, in Greece, 195. 

Farms and farm buildings of Bohemia, 
82, 92. 

Ferdinand, first Czar of Bulgaria, 
accession and abdication, 217. 

Ferdinand, King of Rumania, lunch¬ 
ing with, 246 et seq. 

Firemen, volunteer, of Constantinople, 
277 - 

Flood control along the Danube, 133. 

Flour, great production of, in Buda¬ 
pest, 149, 150. 

Food and its service in Turkey, 275. 

Forestry, well conducted in Moravia, 
104, 

Forum, the, Rome, 57, 58, 65. 

Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, 
death of, 129. 

Fruit trees, planted along highways in 
the valley of the Danube, 104, 143; 
in Jugoslavia, 170. 

Fuad Bey, Dr., on prohibition of plural 
marriages in Turkey, 267. 

Fuel, scarcity of, in Switzerland, 26; 
in Italy, 51. 

Galata and Pera, a section of Con¬ 
stantinople, 260. 

Galata Bridge, the bridge of boats at 
Constantinople, 261. 

Gambling, at the Casino, Sinaia, Ru¬ 
mania, 255. 

Garnets, mined in Czechoslovakia, 80. 

Geese, raised by thousands in Bohe¬ 
mia, 89. 

Geneva, the World’s Peace Capital, 3. 


Geneva, Lake, its picturesque beauty, 
5 - 

Gennadius, Dr. Joannes, gives library 
to American School of Classical 
Studies at Athens, 206. 

Genoa, principal seaport of Italy, 52, 
54 - 

George I, of Greece, 183, 184; inter¬ 
view with, 188. 

George II, of Greece, accession and 
banishment, 183; interview with, 
184, 186; his home life, 188. 

Glaciers, extent of, in Switzerland, 36. 

Gold, mined in Czechoslovakia, 80. 

Golden Horn, a deep inlet at Constan¬ 
tinople, 261. 

Golden Milestone, Rome, 68. 

Gondola travel in Venice, 38. 

Government ownership in Switzer¬ 
land, 19. 

Grain, transportation on the Danube, 
150; method of shocking in the 
valley of the Danube, 173. 

Grapes, great extent of the vineyards 
of Greece, 196, 197. 

Greece, size and topography, 178; the 
land of the rich, 179; the govern¬ 
ment under the kings and the re¬ 
public, 183 et seq.', its present gov¬ 
ernment, 189; a motor trip through, 
191; her farms, vineyards, and olive 
groves, 192; home life of the country 
people, 195; a land of fine fruits, 
196; excavations on the sites of the 
ancient cities, 200 et seq. 

Greeks, natural politicians, 178; their 
patriotism, 179; business acumen, 
180; many semi-Americanized, 181; 
modern people a mixed race, 182; 
costumes of the men and women, 
197, 198; marriage customs, 198; 

Greek Orthodox Church, its doctrines 
and its strength in numbers, 222. 

Griinberger, Doctor, on stability of 
conditions in Austria, 119. 

Gymnasiums, popularity of, in Czecho¬ 
slovakia, 95. 

Gypsies, especially good bricklayers 
and masons in Rumania, 233. 

Hapsburgs, the story of the, 124 et seq. 

Harems, growing scarcity of, in Tur¬ 
key, 267. 

Harnesses and method of hitching of 
horses in Bohemia, 90. 


305 


INDEX 


Hay, John, aid to American School of 
Classical Studies at Athens, 206. 

Historical Museum, Vienna, and some 
of its trophies, 113. 

Hofburg, Vienna, long the palace of 
the Hapsburgs, 112, 125. 

Hogs that grow wool, in Jugoslavia, 
‘ 73 - 

Honey, abundant in Austria, 122; in 
Greece, 196. 

Horses, bronze, of St. Mark’s, 43. 

Howling Dervishes, a fanatical Mo¬ 
hammedan sect, 281. 

Hradchin Castle, the White House of 
Czechoslovakia, 84. 

Hungarian food dishes, 140. 

Hungary, the country and people 
since the War, 130 et seqy, a majority 
of the people desire a kingdom, 130, 
131, 136; early history, 135. 

Hymettus, mountain near Athens, 
175, 176. 


Ileana, Princess, of Rumania, 246, 
250, 253. 

Imperial Opera House, Vienna, 113, 
114 - 

Intensive farming in Bohemia, 92; in 
Hungary, 146. 

International Institute of Agriculture 
founded at Rome, 50. 

Iron ore, production of Czecho¬ 
slovakia, 80; in Austria, 120. 

Irrigation, on the Lombardy Plain, 


Italy, agriculture on Lombardy Plain, 
46 et seq.; wine production, 49; 
wheat, corn, and rice, 50; climate, 
46, 51; waterpower development, 
51; population, density compared 
with that of the United States, 


52. 


“Jail Editors’’ of Belgrade newspapers, 
159 - 

Jewellery, excavated in Greece, 207. 

Jewels of the sultans, a marvellous col¬ 
lection, 292. 

“Josephine,’’ the great bell at Vienna, 
110. 

Jungfrau, view from the top, 30; as¬ 
cent by cog railway, 31. 

Jupiter, Temple of, Rome, 58. 

Justinian, Emperor, builder of Santa 
Sophia, at Constantinople, 286. 


Kara Mustafa, skull of defeated Turk¬ 
ish general in Vienna Museum, 113. 

Karlovy Vary, formerly Carlsbad, 105. 

Kevak, quarantine station for Con¬ 
stantinople, 259. 

Kissimoff, Doctor, on the Bulgarian 
people, 221. 

Knox, John, statue of, at Geneva, 4. 

Labour, wages on Hungarian farms, 
148; wages paid in building trades 
in Belgrade, 155. 

Labour army, of Bulgaria, the en¬ 
forced service of the people to the 
State, 225 et seq. 

Lace making in Appenzell canton, 25. 

Land reform in Czechoslovakia, 93; 
in Greece, 191; in Jugoslavia, 162; 
in Rumania, 237. 

League of Nations, its objects, its 
organization, and its labours, 7; its 
help in rebuilding of Austria, 117. 

League of Nations, Palace of, at 
Geneva, 6. 

Lehar, Franz, composer of “The 
Merry Widow,’’ 114. 

Letterwriters, public, of Stamboul, 
274 - 

Livestock, of Jugoslavia, 173. 

Ljubliana University, number of stu¬ 
dents, 171. 

Lombardy Plains, Italy, 46. 

Loretto Chapel, Vienna, contains the 
hearts of Austria’s rulers for three 
centuries, 128. 

Lowell, James Russell, first president 
of the board of American school of 
classical studies at Athens, 205. 

Lubin, David, International Institute 
of Agriculture founded at Rome to 
carry out idea of, 50. 

Maramuresch, one of the principal oil 
districts of Rumania, 239. 

Marathon, Plains of, 175. 

Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, 
126, 127, 128. 

Maria Theresa, statue of, in Vienna, 
112. 

Mariansky Lazne, formerly Marien- 
bad, 105. 

Marie, Queen of Rumania, lunching 
with, 246 et seq. 

Marie Louise, Empress of the French, 

125, 127, 128. 


306 


INDEX 


Marienbad, now Marianskv Lazne, 

105. 

Mark Twain, prediction of cog rail¬ 
ways up the Alps, 31. 

Masaryk, President, the George Wash¬ 
ington of Czechoslovakia, 100. 

Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, 128, 
129. 

Milan, Italy’s chief railroad and in¬ 
dustrial centre, 52. 

Milan Cathedral, a masterpiece, 53. 

Milk, condensed, production of, in 
Switzerland, 26. 

Milk chocolate, manufacture of, in 
Switzerland, 26. 

Mineral baths, at Sofia, 209. 

Mineral products of Czechoslovakia, 
80. 

Mineral resources of Austria, 120. 

Minerva, shrine to, at Athens, 177. 

Misu, Doctor, High Court Chamber- 
lain, Rumania, 247. 

Mohammedanism and its fanaticism, 
280 et seq.; some of its brighter as¬ 
pects, 285. 

Mohammed VI the last sultan of 
Turkey, 295, 296, 

Moravia, one of three provinces com¬ 
posing Czechoslovakia, 79; great 
natural wealth of, 104. 

Moreni-Tuicani oil field in Rumania, 
240. 

Mosaics of St, Mark’s Cathedral, 42. 

Mosque of Santa Sophia, some of its 
treasures, 285; its history, 286. 

Motoring through Bohemia, 88. 

Mountain sickness, from climbing the 
Jungfrau, 34. 

Murad V, short reign of, as sultan of 
Turkey, 293. 

Museum, Imperial, of Stamboul, 277. 

Mustafa Kemal Pasha, the present 
ruler of Turkey, 296. 

Naples, largest city of Italy, 74. 

Newspapers, of Belgrade, 159; of 
Athens, 181. 

Nijni-Novgorod, the dead city of 
Russia, 41. 

Oats, yield per acre in Bohemia, 91; 
in Moravia, 104; in Hungary, 143; 
in Jugoslavia, 170; in Rumania, 
234 - 

Obelisk, at Rome, 61. 


Oil wells, extent of production in 
Czechoslovakia, 80; Rumanian 
fields the richest in Europe, 234, 
239 et seq. 

Olives and olive oil, production of, in 
Greece, 193. 

Opals, mined in Czechoslovakia, 80. 

Opelany, Bohemia, intensive farming 
at, 92. 

Opollo, Temple of, at Delphi, 201; at 
Corinth, 205. 

Oracle, of Delphi, 200; of Corinth, 
205. 

Otto, first king of the new Greece, 
183. 

Otto, Prince, heir to the throne of the 
Hapsburgs, 146. 

Oxen, main beasts of burden in Czecho¬ 
slovakia, 82; how harnessed, 83, 

Palace of Justice, Rome, 60, 

Palatine, the Rome, 57. 

Paper, manufacture of, in Belgrade, 
156. 

Parliament Building, Budapest, 137. 

Parnassus, Mount, the great theatre 
on, 203, 

Parthenon, the, at Athens, 175, 176, 
177. 

Pashitch, Nikola, the “Grand Old 
Man” of the Serbs, 164. 

Pelagra, scourge of the Italian peas¬ 
ants, 47. 

People's Opera House, Vienna, 114. 

Pera and Galata, a section of Con¬ 
stantinople, 260. 

Petroleum, Rumanian fields the rich¬ 
est in Europe, 234, 239 et seq. 

Petroleum, product of Czechoslovakia, 

80. 

Pilaf, a popular Turkish food, 276. 

Ploesti, the centre of Rumania’s oil 
fields, 239, 240. 

Plzen, manufacturing city of Bohemia, 

81, 105. 

Po, largest river of Italy, 46. 

Polygamy, growing unpopularity of, 
in Turkey, 267. 

Pompeii, excavations at, 73 et seq. 

Porters, the burden bearers of Con¬ 
stantinople, 263. 

Potatoes, yield per acre in Bohemia, 
91; in Jugoslavia, 170. 

Prague, Czechoslovakia, capital and 
chief business centre, 81, 83. 


307 


INDEX 


Prahova, most important oil district 
of Rumania, 239, 

Pressburg, now Bratislava, capital of 
Slovakia, 104, 105, 106. 

Pulp wood, in Moravia, 104; produc¬ 
tion of Austria, 121. 

Putnam, Dr. Herbert, appraisal of 
library presented to American 
School of Classical Studies at 
Athens, 206. 

Quirinal, site of the royal palace, 
Rome, 58. 

Raditch, demagogic leader of the 
Croats in Jugoslavia, 164. 

Radium, amount produced in Bohe¬ 
mia, 80. 

Railways, of Czechoslovakia, 81; of 
Jugoslavia, 166; electrification of, 
in Austria, 121. 

Reclamation of swamp lands in Hun- 

Red Cross, International, founded at 
Geneva, 4. 

Reformation Monument, at Geneva, 

Reichstadt, Duke of, son of Napoleon 
and Marie Louise, 127, 128. 

Religion, in Bohemia, 90. 

Rialto Bridge, at Venice, 40. 

Ribbons, manufacture of, at Basel, 24. 

Rice, production in Italy, 50. 

Riding School, Vienna, long a royal 
institution, now open to the public, 
126. 

Ringstrasse, Vienna, great thorough¬ 
fare built on medieval ramparts, 
112. 

Robert College, Constantinople, 260. 

Rockefeller, John D., aids American 
School of Classical Studies at 
Athens, 206. 

Rome, the Eternal City, 56 et seq.; 
her ancient grandeur, 65. 

Royal Castle, at Sinaia, Rumania, 
246. 

Royal Palace, Budapest, 136. 

Rumania, its capital city Bucharest, 
231; country doubled in size since 
the War, 234; its agriculture, min¬ 
erals, and forest products, 234,; the 
people and their culture, 235; land 
reform laws, 237; its oil fields the 
richest in Europe, 234, 239 seq. 


Rural credit associations, in Italy, 50. 

Rye, in Hungary, 143, 147; in Jugo¬ 
slavia, 170; in Rumania, 234. 

St. Gall, Switzerland, an embroidery 
centre, 25. 

St. Gothard, electric road through, 30. 

St. John, church of, in the Lateran, 
Rome, 63. 

St. John of Nepomuk, statue of in 
Prague, 86. 

St. Mark’s Cathedral, Venice, 42. 

St. Mark’s Place, the heart of Venice, 
42. 

St. Peter, statue of, at the Cathedral, 
Rome, 62. 

St. Peter, tomb of, in the Cathedral, 
Rome, 63. 

St. Peter’s Cathedral, Rome, 57, 60, 
61, 62. 

St. Stephen’s Cathedral, most impos¬ 
ing edifice in Vienna, 113; ancient 
burial place of royalty, 128. 

St. Stephen’s Place, the heart of old 
Vienna, 109, 111. 

St. Theodore, statue of, in Venice, 45. 

St. Vitus, Cathedral of, in Prague, 84. 

Sales tax, its help in rehabilitation of 
Austria, 118. 

Salt, a government monopoly in Italy, 
48. 

Saturn, Temple of, Rome, 67. 

Scala Santa, the Sacred Stairs, at 
Rome, 63. 

Scheurer, Carl, President of Switzer¬ 
land, 20. 

Schliemann, Doctor, excavations of, 
in Greece, 207; collections of in 
Imperial Museum, Constantinople, 
278. 

Schonborn Palace, the American lega¬ 
tion in Prague, 86. 

Schonbrunn, Austrian Emperor’s sum¬ 
mer residence, now public holiday 
resort, 126. 

Scutari, a section of Constantinople, 
260. 

Septimus Severus, Arch of, Rome, 67. 

Silk, manufacture of, at Zurich, 24. 

Silk culture on Lombardy Plain, 46; in 
Jugoslavia, 170. 

Silver, mined in Czechoslovakia, 80. 

Sinaia, summer capital of Rumania, 
246. 

Slaves, in Turkish harems, 268. 


308 


INDEX 


Slovakia, one of the three provinces 
composing Czechoslovakia, 79; the 
country and its people, 105. 

Sofia, the municipal mineral baths, 
209; the mighty Alexander Nevsky 
Cathedral, 210; its universities, 
schools, and museums, 211; its 
people, 213; the public markets, 
214; costumes of the peasants, 215. 

Sokol, the national athletic institution 
of Czechoslovakia, 95. 

Stadium, in Athens, 174. 

Stamboul, principal section of Con¬ 
stantinople, 261; among the bazaars, 
272. 

Stambouliski, his work in Bulgaria, 
230. 

Standard Oil Company, controls best 
refinery in Rumania, 240; work in 
Rumanian fields, 245. 

Stephanove, Dr. Constantine, his pick 
and shovel work in Bulgaria's labour 
army, 228. 

Stephane, Monsignor, Archbishop of 
Sofia, 223; his message to the people 
of the United States, 224. 

Stock raising, important industry of 
Austria, 122. 

Strauss, Johann, the composer, 114. 

Strauss, Richard, conductor of Im¬ 
perial Opera House, Vienna, 114. 

Strikes, illegal in Belgrade, 155. 

Student cooperation in Budapest, 142. 

Sugar beets, yield per acre in Bohemia, 
91; in Hungary, 143, 147; in Jugo¬ 
slavia, 170. 

Sultans, Turkish, the passing of, 290 
et seq. 

Swiss Confederation, founding of, 13. 

Switzerland, the country of peace, 3; 
Europe's oldest republic, 13; inten¬ 
sive agriculture, 14; comparative 
size and population, 15; republican¬ 
ism and good government, 15; the 
three official languages, 15, 18; the 
system of government, 19; govern¬ 
ment ownership of public utilities, 
21; the principal industries of the 
country, 23; extent of tourist and 
hotel business, 25; waterpower de¬ 
velopment, 27; foreign trade, 27; 
thrift and savings bank deposits, 
28- 

Swamp lands, reclamation of, in Hun¬ 
gary, 133 - 


Tabnith, King of Sidon, his sarcoph¬ 
agus in Imperial Museum at 
Constantinople, 278. 

Tax exemption, on new building in 
Belgrade, 155. 

Teleki, Count Paul, on the flood con¬ 
trol of the Danube, 133; large attend¬ 
ance at his lectures, 142. 

Temple of Jupiter, Rome, 58. 

Temple of Saturn, Rome, 67. 

Temple of Vesta, Rome, 70. 

Tenant farming, in Italy, 48. 

Thebes, Greece, a visit to, 192. 

Tin, mined in Czechoslovakia, 80. 

Tobacco, in Jugoslavia, 170; in Greece, 
191, 192; the crop of Rumania, 234. 

Town Hall, Vienna, an imposing edi¬ 
fice, 113. 

Transylvania, new province of Ru¬ 
mania, 256. 

Turin, one of Italy's chief industrial 
cities, 52. 

Turkish baths, of Constantinople, 275. 

Tyrs, Doctor, leading spirit in the na¬ 
tional athletics of Czechoslovakia, 96. 

Umbilicus monument, Rome, 67. 

University colony built by labour of 
its students, in Prague, 100. 

University of Vienna, second oldest 
German university, 113. 

Valcea, one of the principal oil dis¬ 
tricts of Rumania, 239. 

Vatican, the, Rome, 57. 

Venice, the “Queen of the Adriatic," 
38. 

Vesta, Temple of, Rome, 70. 

Vesuvius, volcano of, 75. 

Victor Emanuel Arcade, Milan, 53. 

Vienna, ancient and modern, 103; a 
trip about the city, 109; its great¬ 
ness due to geographical locations, 
III; musical centre and the home of 
great composers, 114; after great 
depression business now recovered, 

114. 

Vineyards, in Hungary, 144. 

Von Weingartner, Felix, conductor of 
People's Opera, Vienna, 114, 

Votive Church, Vienna, established as 
a thank offering by Emperor Fran¬ 
cis Joseph, 128. 

Watch factories, in Switzerland, 23. 

Water buffaloes, as beasts of burden 


309 


INDEX 


in Bulgaria, 214; in Constantinople, 
263. 

Waterpower, development of, in Swit¬ 
zerland, 27; in Italy, 51; resources of 
Austria, 121; in Greece, 179. 

Water supply of Bohemian villages, 
89 - 

Wheat, production in Italy, 50; yield 
per acre in Bohemia, 91; in Mora¬ 
via, 104; in Hungary, 143; experi¬ 
ments to increase production, on 
Batthyanyi estate, 148; in Jugo¬ 
slavia, 170; the principal grain crop 
of Greece, 192; in Rumania, 234. 

Whirling Dervishes, a fanatical Mo¬ 
hammedan sect, 281. 

William of Orange, state of, at Geneva, 
4 - 

Williams, Roger, statue of, at Geneva, 

4 - 

Wine making, in Italy, 49, 50; in 
Hungary, 144. 

Winged Lion of St. Mark, statue of, in 
Venice, 45. ^ 

Woman suffrage, in Czechoslovakia, 
99 - 

Women, as labourers in Czechoslo¬ 
vakia, 82, 83, 90, 91; athletic and 
sensible in Czechoslovakia, 98; as 


farm labourers in Hungaiy, 148; 
as labourers in Jugoslavia, 155; 
their work in Bulgaria’s conscript 
labour army, 228; Gypsy labourers 
in Rumania, 233; as labourers in oil 
fields of Rumania, 241; the new 
woman in Turkey, 265 et seq. 

Wood carving industry ;in Switzer¬ 
land, 25. 

Young Turks, their seizure of power, 
294. 

Yugoslavia, its capital city, Belgrade, 
152; smallness of the farms, 162, 
168; its various peoples, 162; its 
Parliament and political parties, 
165; project for new railroad to be 
built by American syndicate, 166; 
the peasants, and their small farms, 
168, 172. 

Zagreb University, number of stu¬ 
dents, 171. 

Zimmerman, Doctor, in charge of 
Austrian rehabilitation, 126. 

Zita, Empress of Austria, accompanies 
Emperor Charles in airplane in vain 
attempt to regain throne, 145. 

Zurich, textile weaving of, 24. 


310 



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